I M '^ 



THE 



FARMER'S BOY 



TEXT AND ILLUSTRATIONS BY 

CLIFTON JOHNSON 

AUTHOR OF THE COUNTRY SCHOOL IN NEW ENGLAND 





NEW YORK 

D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 

1894 



^ 



Copyright, 1894, 
By D. APPLETON AND COMPANY. 



Electrotyi'ed and Printed 

AT THE Al-1'LETON PrESS, U. S. A. 



PREFATORY NOTE. 

In what this volume tells of the farmer's boy, readers will 
find that many episodes and interests in the life of the boy are 
not even mentioned. One book, indeed, would not contain them 
all. There is, however, one important omission that is intentional 
—his school life. The reason for this is that the writer treated the 
subject in detail in a volume uniform with this, published last year. 
Its title is The Country School in New England, and its pub- 
lishers are D. Appleton and Company, of New York. It is also to 
be explained that, while the present volume is primarily about the 
boy on the farm, it is intended that the rest of the family, in par- 
ticular the girl, shall not altogether lack attention either in text 
or pictures. Clifton Johnson. 

Hadley," Mass., June, 1894. 



CONTENTS 



Wintp:r 



PART I. 



PAGE 
I 



Spring 



PART II. 



24 



Summer 



PART III. 



46 



Autumn 



PART IV. 



75 



PART V. 

Country Children in General. 



97 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 



Meditations by a streamside . 

The morning scrub at the sink 

Late to supper 

In the January thaw — wet feet 

Sliding by the riverside . 

Comfort by the fire on a cold day 

Doorstep pets 

Bringing in wood . 

Coasting 

Winding the clock 

On the fence over the brook 

Rubbing down old Billy 

A drink of sap 

A new picture paper 

Catching flood-wood 

A hillside sheep pasture 

Spring chickens 

Willow whistles 

The opening of the fishing season 

Leap-frog in the front yard . 

A blossom for the baby 

Playing " Indian " . 

On the way to pasture 

Discussing the colt 

A little housekeeper 

Some fun in a boat 

Advising the hired boy 

Waiting for the dinner horn 

Eating clover blossoms . 



Front! 



'spiece 



Fac 



Fac 



Faci 

Fac 

Fac 
Fac 



3 

5 
6 
ng 8 

lO 

1 1 
•3 

i6 
19 

21 
22 
24 
26 

ng 28 

31 
32 
35 
ng 37 
39 
40 

41 

ng 42 
43 

ng 44 
47 
48 

50 



(vii) 



vm 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 



In swimming . . . • 

Cutting their names in a tree-trunk 

Weeding onions . 

Working out his "stent" 

Fishing 

A faithful follower 

Two who have been a-borrowing 

The Fourth of July 

Getting ready to mow . 

On the hay tedder 

The boy rakes after 

A summer evening game of tag 

Waders— they wet their "pants" 

A voyage on a log 

Potato-bugging 

A chipmunk up a tree . 

Baiting the cows by the roadside 

The boys and their steers . 

Shooting with a sling . 

A corner of the sheep yard . 

Helping grandpa husk . 

Out for a tramp . 

A drink at the tub in the back yard 

Over the pasture hills to the chestnut 

A mud turtle 

Weeding the posy bed 

Grandpa husks sweet corn for dinner 

A game of croquet 

Afternoon on the front pore 

A sawmill 

Going up for a slide 

A winter ride 

Washing the supper dishes 

Sliding on the frost 

Tailpiece 



trees 



and 



tells 



a story at 



the 



time 





51 


Facing 


52 




54 




57 




58 




60 




63 




65 




67 




68 




71 


Facing 


72 




73 




76 




78 




81 




82 




85 




87 




89 


Facing 


90 




91 




92 


Facing 


93 




95 




98 




100 




102 




104 




107 




108 




III 


Facing 


1 12 




114 




116 



THE FARMER'S BOY. 



PART I. 

WINTER. 



ON New-Years morning the first thing the boy hears is the 
voice of his father caUing from the foot of the stairs, 
" Come, Frank — time to get up ! " 

You may perhaps imagine that the boy leaps lightly from his 
bed, and that he is soon clattering merrily down the stairs to the 
tune of his own whistle. But the real, live boy who will fit so 
romantic and pretty an impression it would be hard to find. 

Our boy Frank is so unheroic as to barely grunt out a response 
that shall give his father to understand that he has heard him, and 
then he turns over and slumbers again. It is six o'clock. The first 
gray hints of the coming day have begun to penetrate the little 
chamber. The boy's clothing lies in a heap on the floor just where 
he jumped out of it in his haste the night before to get out of 
the frosty atmosphere and into his bed. In one corner of the 
room is a decrepit chair, whose cane-seat bottom had some time 
ago increased its original leakiness to such a degree that it had 
been judged unsuited to the pretensions of the sitting-room below 
stairs, and been banished to the chambers. An old trunk with a 



2 THE FARMER'S BOY. 

cloth cover thrown over it, and a stand with a cracked little mirror 
above, are the other most striking articles of furnishing. 

The walls of the room are not papered, and where the bed stands 
the bedposts have bruised the plaster so that you catch a glimpse 
or two of the lath behind. Vet the walls are not so bare as they 
might be, for the vacant space is made interesting by a large, legal- 
looking certificate that affirms that the boy's father, by the payment 
of thirty dollars, has been made a life member of the Home Mis- 
sionary Society. The boy is rather proud of this fact ; for, though 
he does not know what it all means, he feels sure it is something 
good and religious. He often reads the certificate, and ciphers out 
the names of the distinguished men who have put their signatures 
at the foot of the document ; and he likes to look at the Bible scene 
pictured at the top, and takes pleasure in the elaborate frame, all 
made out of hemlock and pine cones. He is tempted to the belief 
that he is blessed above most boys in having a father who has the 
honor to be a life member of the Home Missionary Society, and 
who possesses such a certificate in such a frame. Indeed, he has 
gone much further than this upon occasion, and has complaisantly 
concluded that his folks were pretty sure of going to heaven in 
the end — at any rate, their chances were better than those of most 
of the neighbors. He knew very well his folks were more religious 
than most, and wasn't his flither a life member of the Home Mis- 
sionary Society } 

Our boy did not think these thoughts on New-Year's morning. 
Getting-up time came while it was still too dark to make out much 
besides the dim shapes of the articles about the room. Even the 



WINTER. 



gayly colored soap advertisement he had hung next to the mis- 
sionary certificate was dull and shapeless, and the garments depend- 
ing from the loncj row of nails in the wall at the foot of the bed 
could not be told apart. 

The morning is very 
cold. The window panes 
are rimed with frost, so 
that hardly a spot of 
clear glass remains un- 
touched, and there is a 
cloudy puff of vapor 
from among the pillows 
with the boy's every 
outo-oinii: breath. 

The boy's father, 
after he had properly 
warned his son of the 
approach of day, made 
the kitchen fire and 
went out to the barn to 
feed the cattle. When 
he returns to the house 
he appears to be aston- 
ished that Frank has not come down, though one would think 
he miirht have p-ot used to it by this time. He stalks to the up- 
stairs door and says, in tones whose sternness seems to prophesy 
dire things if not met with prompt obedience : " Frank ! don't you 




The viorninj; scrub at the sink. 



4 THE FARMER'S BOY. 

hear me ? I called you a quarter o' an hour ago. I want vou to 
get uj) right off!" 

' CominV' says Frank, and he rubs his eyes and tries to muster 
resolution to get out into the cold. 

"Well, it's 'bout time!" returns his father, "and you better be 
spry about it, too." 

When you sleep on a feather bed it lets you down into its 
yielding mass, so that if you have enough clothes on top you can 
sleep in tropical contentment. There is no chance for the frost to 
get in at any of the corners. Frank felt that his happiness would 
be complete were he allowed to doze on half the morning in his 
snug nest, but he knew it was hopeless aspiring to such bliss, and 
a few minutes later he appeared down-stairs, and the way he ap- 
peared was this: his hair was tumbled topsv-turvy, his eyes had still 
a sleepy droop, and he was in his shirt sleeves and stocking feet. 
He had no fondness for freezing in his room any longer than was 
necessary after he was once out of bed, and he always left such 
garments as he could spare dowm-stairs by the stove. Of course, 
he had not washed. That he would do just before breakfast, at the 
kitchen sink, after the outdoor work was done. 

The half-dressed boy, as soon as he gets down-stairs, hastens to 
make friends with the sitting-room stove, where a fire, with the aid 
of " chunks," has been kept all night. A light is burning in the 
kitchen, and his mother is clattering about there, thawing things 
out and getting breakfast. The boy hugs the stove as closely 
as the nature of it will allow, and turns himself this way and 
that to let the heat soak in thoroughly all around. Then he puts 



WINTER. 




Late to supper. 



on the heavy pair of shoes he left the nia^ht before in a comfort- 
able place back of the stove, gets his collar on, and his vest and 
coat, pulls a cap down over his ears, and shuffles off to the barn. 
Frank is thirteen years old, but he has been one of the workers 
whom it has seemed necessary to stir out the first thing in the morn- 
ing for years back. He knew how to milk when he was seven, and 
he began to bring in wood — a stick at a time — about as soon as he 
could walk. He did not grumble at his lot nor think it a hard one, 
nor would he had it been ten times worse. Indeed, children, unless 
set a bad example by the complaining habits of their elders, or 
because they are spoiled by petting and lack of employment, accept 



5 THE FARMER'S BOY. 

thino-s as thcv find them, and make the best of them. Even the 
farm debt, which may burden the elders very heavily and keep all 
the family on the borders of shabbiness for years, makes but a light 
and occasional impression on the youngsters. Then as to those acci- 
dents that are continually happening on a farm, and that are so 
heart-breaking and discouraging to the poorer ones — the collapse 
of a wagon, the sickness of the best cow, the death of the old horse, 
the giving out of the kitchen stove so that a new one is absolutely 
necessary ; the children may shed a few tears, but work, and the 
little pleasures they so readily discover under the most untoward 
conditions, soon make the sun shine again and the mists of trouble 
melt into forgetfulness. 

Boys on small farms which have only two or three cows do not 
milk regularly — the father or an older brother does it; but if the 

rest of them are 
away from home or 
too busy with other 
work, the boy is 
called upon. Per- 
haps the father has 
to go so many miles 
over the hills to 
market, that he will 
not get home until 
well on in the even- 
ing. In that case you find the boy at nightfall poking about 
the glooms of the barn with a lantern, and doino; all the odd 




/// ///,' January t/ia7(>—"a't-t feet. 



WINTER. 7 

jobs that need to be done before he can milk. When these are 
finished, the little fellow gets the big tin pail at the house, hangs 
his lantern on a nail in the stable, and sits down beside one of the 
cows. He sets the milk streams playing a pleasant tune on the reso- 
nant bottom of the pail, and from time to time snuggles his head 
up against the cow for the sake of the warmth. If the cow gives a 
pailful, his knees begin to ache and shake with the weight of the 
milk before he has done, and his fingers grow cramped and stiff with 
their long-continued action. However, the boy always perseveres 
to the end ; and if, when he takes the milk in, his mother says he 
has got more than his pa does, he grows an inch taller in conscious 
pride of his merits. 

There is a difference in cows. Some requite a good deal more 
muscle than others to bring the milk ; some are skittish. One of 
these uneasy cows will keep whacking you on the ear with her tail 
every minute or two all tlnough the milking, and at the same time 
the coarse and not overclean tuft of hau" on the end will go stinging 
along your cheek. Then the cow \v\\\ be continually stepping away 
from you sidewise, and you have to keep edging after her with your 
stool. These unexpected and uncalled-for dodges make the streams 
of milk go astray, and you get your overalls and boots well splashed 
as one of the results; another is that you lose your temper, and 
give the cow a fierce rap with your fist. That makes matters worse 
instead of better. The cow seems to have no notion of what you 
are chastising her for, and o-ets livelier than ever. It sometimes 
happens, in the end, that the cow gives the boy a sudden poke with 
a hind foot that sends him sprawling — pail, stool, and all. Then the 



3 THE FARMER'S BOY. 

boy feels that his cup of sorrow has run over ; he knows that his 
pail of milk has. 

'When a boy o;ets into trouble he always feels that the best thing 
he can do is to go and hunt up his mother. That is what our boy 
who met disaster in the cow-stable did. He left his lantern behind, 
but he carried in the pail with the dribble of milk and foam that 
was still left in the bottom. 

His mother was cutting a loaf of bread on the supper-table- 
"Are you through so soon.?" she asked. "Why, Johnny, what's 
the matter?" she says, noticing his woe-begone face. 
"The cow kicked me!" replies Johnny. 

His mother gets excited, and steps over to examine him. " Well, 
I should say so!" she exclaimed. "You're completely plastered 
from head to foot. Spilt all the milk, too, didn't it.? Well, well, 
what's the matter with the old cow ? " 

" I don' know," replied Johnny tearfully. " She just up and 
kicked me right over." 

"Well, now, Johnny, never mind," said his mother soothingly. 
" You needn't try to milk her any more to-night. You better tie 
her legs together next time when you milk. She's real hateful, 
that cow is. I've seen the way she'll hook around the other 
cows lots of times. Here, you run into the bedroom, and I'll 
get your Sunday clothes for you to change into. Wait a min- 
ute till I lay down a newspaper for you to put your old duds 
onto." 

A little later Johnny went out to the barn and brought in the 
lantern. Then he sat down to supper, and by the time he had 



WINTER. 9 

eaten ten mouthfuls of bread and milk he felt entirely comforted 
and blissful after his late trials. 

The boy's usual work at night was to let the cows in from the 
barnyard where they had been standing, to get down hay and cut 
up stalks for them, water and feed the horses, bring in wood, not 
foro-ettino: kindlinfrs for the kitchen stove and chunks to keen the 
sitting-room fire overnight, and, last but not least, he had to do 
all the odd helping his father happened to call on him for. 

The bov enjoyed most of this, more or less, but his real happi- 
ness came when work was done and he could wash up and sit down 
to his supper. The consciousness that he had got through the day's 
labor, the comfort of the indoor warmth, the keen appetite he had 
won— all combined to give such a com{)laisancy, both physical and 
mental, as might move many a grown-up and pampered son of 
fortune to envy. 

The boy usually spends his evenings very quietly. He studies 
his lessons on the kitchen table, or he draws up close to the sitting- 
room fire and reads a story paper. There is not so much literature 
in the average family but that the boy will go through this paper 
from beginning to end, advertisements and all, and the pictures half 
a dozen times over. In the end, the ])aper is laid away in a closet 
up-stairs, and when he happens on dull times and doesn't know what 
else to do with himself, he wanders up there and delves in this pile 
of papers. He finds it very pleasant, too. stirring up the echoes of 
past enjoyment by a renewed acquaintance with the stories and 
pictures he had found interesting long before. 

Evenings are varied with family talks, and sometimes the boy 



lO 



THE FARMER'S BOY. 



induces his grandfather to repeat some old rhymes, tell a story, or 
sins: a son";. When there are several children in the family things 
often become quite lively of an evening. The older children are 
called upon to amuse the younger ones, and they have some high 
times. There are lots of fun and noise, and squalling, too, and some 




.■saiK!y"5^-" 



Comfort by ilic fire on a cold day. 



energetic remarks and actions on the part of the elders, calculated 
to put a sudden stop to certain of the most enterprising and reck- 
less of the proceedings. 

The baby is a continual subject of solicitude. His tottering steps 
give him many a fall, anyway, and he aspires to climb everything 
climbable ; and if he doesn't tumble down two or three times getting 
up, he is pretty sure to do it after the accomplishment of his ambi- 



WINTER. 



II 



tion. Then he makes astonishing expeditions on his hands and 
knees. You feel yourself liable to stumble over and annihilate him 
almost anywhere. The parents realize these things, and is it any 
wonder, when the rest of the flock get to flying around the room 
full tilt, that they become alarmed for the baby, and that their voices 
get raspy and forceful } 

Blindman's buff and tag and general skirmishing are not alto- 
gether suited to the little room where, besides the chairs and lounge 
and organ, there is a hot stove and a table with a lamp on it. 

You need some practice to 
get much satisfaction from a 
conversation carried on amid 
the hubbub. You have to 
shout every word ; and if the 
children happen to have a 
special fondness for you, they 
do most of their tumbling 
right around your chair. 

Some of the children's best 
times come when the father 
and mother throw off all other 
cares and thoughts, and be- 
come for the time being their 
companions in the evening en- 
joyment. What roaring fun 
they have when papa plays 
wheelbarrow \\\i\\ them, and Doorsu-p pets. 




j^ THE FARMER'S BOY. 

puzzles them with some of the sleight-of-hand trieks he learned when 
he was youni^ ; or when mamma becomes a much - entertained lis- 
tener while the oldest boy speaks a piece, and rolls his voice, and 
keeps his arms waving in gestures from beginning to end ! The 
other children are quite overpowered by the larger boy's eloquence. 
Even the baby sits in quiet on the lioor, and lets his mouth drop 
open in astonishment. 

The mother is apt to be more in sympathy with these goings on 
than the father, and I fancy it is on such occasions as he happens to 
be absent that they have most of this sort of celebration. At such 
a time, too, the children wax confidential, and tell what they intend 
to be when they grow up : this one will be a storekeeper, this one 
will be a minister, this one a doctor, this one a singer. They all 
intend to be rich and famous, and to do some fine things for their 
mother some day. They do not pick out any of the callings for love 
of gain primarily, but because they think they will enjoy the life. In- 
deed, when Tommy said he was going to be a minister, the reason he 
gave for this desire was that he wanted to ring the bell every Sunday. 

Bedtime comes on a progressive scale, gauged by the age of the 
individual. First the bcd)y is metamorphosed and tucked away in 
his crib ; then the three-year-old goes through a lingering process 
of preparation, and, after a little run in his nightgown about the 
room, he is stowed away in crib number two, and his mother sings 
him a lullaby, or a song from Gospel Hymns, and that fixes him for 
the night. These two occupy the same sleeping room as the parents, 
and it adjoins the sitting room. The door to it has been open 
all the evening, and it is comfortably warm. 



WINTER. 



13 



Girls and boys of eight or ten years old will take their own lamps 
and march off to the cold uj)per chambers at eight o'clock or before. 
Some of the upper rooms may have a stovepipe running through, 
which serves to blunt the edge of the cold a tritie, or there may be 
a register or hole in the floor to allow the heat to come up from 




Bi'iitisiiii' in 7C'0od. 



below ; but, as a rule, the chambers are shivery places in winter, 
and when the youngsters jump in between the icy sheets their teeth 
are set chattering, and it is some minutes before the delightful 
warmth which follows gains its gradual ascendency. 

The boy who sits up as late as his elders is usually well started 



j^ THE FARMER'S BOY. 

in his teens. The children are not inclined to complain of early 
hours unless something uncommon is going on. They are tired 
enough by bedtime. Even the older members of the family are 
physically weary with the day's work, and the evening talk is apt 
to be lagging and sleepy in its tone, and the father gets to yawning 
over his reading, and the mother to nodding over her sewing. Many 
times the chiefs of the household will start bedward soon after eight ; 
and as to the growing boy, he usually disregards the privilege of late 
hours, and takes himself off at whatever time after supper his tired- 
ness begins to get overpowering. 

It would be difficult to say surely that the boy's room I described 
early in this chapter was an average one. The boy is not coddled 
with the best room in the house. In some dwellings the upper 
story has but two or three rooms that are entirely finished. The 
rest is open space roughly floored, and with no ceiling but the rafters 
and boards of the roof There are boys who have a bed or two in 
such quarters as these, or in a little half-garret room in the L. 
These unfinished quarters are the less agreeable if the roof happens 
to be leaky. Sounds of dripping water or sifting snow within one's 
room are not pleasant. On the other hand, there are plenty of boys 
who have rooms with striped paper on the w^alls, and possibly a rag 
carpet under foot, not to speak of other things no less ornate. 

In the matter of knickknacks, most boys do not fill their rooms 
to any extent with them — the girls are more apt to do this. But a 
boy is pretty sure to have some treasures in his room, lie is not 
very particular where he stows them, and he is likely to have some 
severe trials about house-cleaning time. His mother fails to appre- 



WINTER. 15 

ciate the value of his special belongings, and is not in sympathy 
with his method of placing them. They get disarranged and thrown 
away. If fortune favors the buy with the drawers of an old bureau, 
he is fairly safe ; but things he })Uts on the shelf and stand, and espe- 
cially those he puts right along there in a row under the head of 
the bed — oh, where are they ? 

A winter breakfast on a farm is over about sunrise. All the 
rollino- hills near and far lie lune and white beneath the dome of 
blue, and they sparkle with many a frosty diamond, and sunward 
crleam with dazzlinir radiance. I doubt if the boy cares very much 
about this. He is no stickler for beauty. Questions of comfort 
and a good time lie uppermost in his mind. Nature's shifting 
forms and colors and movements affect him usually but mildly as 
a matter of beauty or sentiment, though in a simple way many 
things touch him to a degree ; but commonly the phase that pre- 
sents itself uppermost is a physical one. The sun shines on the 
snow — it blinds his eyes. A gray day is the dismal forerunner of 
a storm. Sunsets, unless particularly gaudy, have no interest, except 
as they suggest some weather sign. He delights more in days that 
are crystal clear, when every object in the distant hills and valleys 
stands sharply distinct, than in the mellow days that soften the 
landscape with their gauzy blues. He loves action, not dreams. 

Boys, like animals, feel a friskiness in their bones on the approach 
of a storm. They will run and shout then for the mere pleasure 
of it, and play, of whatever sort, gets an added zest. It may be 
the dead of winter, but that does not keep them indoors. If the 
wind blows a orale and whistles and rattles about the home build- 



i6 



THE FARMER'S BOY. 



ino-s and makes the trees crack and creak, so much the better. Nor 
will the onset of the storm itself drive them indoors. The whirling 

flakes may increase 
in number till they 
blur all the land- 
scape, and go seeth- 
ing in shifting wind- 
rows over every hil- 
lock ; yet it will be 
some time before 
the children will 
pause in their slid- 
ing, skating, or run- 
ning to think of 
the indoor fire. 

When they do 
go in, it is as if 
all the out-of-door 
breezes had gained 
sudden entrance. 
They all come tum- 
bling through the 
door with a bang 
and a rush, and 
there is a scattering of clinging snow when they pull off their 
wraps and throw them into convenient chairs or corners. They 
declare they are almost frozen as they stamp their feet about the 




ir k 



IViiiiiiiii: the clock. 



WINTER. 17 

kitchen fire, and hug their elbows to their bodies and rub their 
fingers over the stove's iron top. 

"Well, why didn't you come in before, then?" asks their mother. 

" Oh, we was playing," is the answer. " We been having a lots 
of fun. The snow's drifted up the road so it's over our shoes now." 

" You better take off your shoes, if you've got any snow in 
'em," the mother says. " I declare, how you have slopped up the 
floor! And you've made it cold as a barn here, comin' in all in a 
lump that way. — Here, Johnny, don't you go into the sittin' room 
till you get kind o' dried off and decent." 

" I just wanted to get the cat," says Johnny. 

" Well, you can't go in on the carpet with such lookin' shoes, 
cat or no cat ! " is his mother's response. 

Meanwhile she has taken her broom and brushed out on the 
piazza some of the snow lumps and puddles of water the children 
have scattered. 

The indoor stoves are an important item in the boy's winter 
life. It is a matter of perpetual astonishment to him how much 
wood those stoves will burn. He has to bring it all in, and he 
finds it as much of a drudgery as his sister does the everlasting 
washing and wiping of dishes. It is his duty to fill the wood- 
boxes about nightfall each day. The wood shed is half dark, and 
the day has lost every particle of glow and warmth. He can 
rarely get up his resolution to the point of filling the wood-boxes 
"chuck full." He puts in what he thinks will "do," and lives in 
hopes he will not be disturbed in other plans by having to re- 
plenish the stock before the regulation time the night following. 



i8 



THE FARMER'S BOY. 



Sometimes he tries to avoid the responsibility of a doubtfully filled 
wood-box by referring the case to his mother. 

"Is that enough, mamma?" he says. 

" Well, have you tilled it ? " she asks. 

" It's pretty full," replies the boy. 

" Well, perhaps that'll do," responds his mother sympathetically, 
and the boy becomes at once conscience free and cheerful. 

All through the day, when the boy is in the home neighborhood, 
he is continually resorting to the stoves to get warmed up. Every 
time he comes in he makes a few passes over the stove with his 
hands, and he must be crowded for time if he can not take a turn 
or two before the fire to give the heat a chance at all sides. If he 
has still more leisure, he gets an apple from the cellar, or a cooky 
from the pantry, and eats it while he warms up ; or he goes in and 
sits by the sitting-room stove and reads a little in the paper. One 
curious thing he early finds out is, that he gets cold much quicker 
when he is working than when he is playing. 

Probably the majority of New England boys spend most of the 
winter in school ; though in the hill towns, where roads are bad and 
houses much scattered, the smaller schools are closed. While he 
attends school the boy has not much time for anything but the 
home chores; but on Saturdavs, and in vacation, he may at times 
go into the woods with the men. There is no small excitement 
in clinging to the sled as it pitches along through the rough 
wood roads amid a clanking of chains and the shouts of the 
driver. The man, who is familiar with the work, seems to have 
no hesitation in driving anywhere and over all sorts of obsta- 



WINTER. 



19 




On the fence over the brook. 



cles. The boy does 
not know whether he 
is most exhilarated or 
frightened, but he has 
no thought of show- 
ing a lack of cour- 
age, and he hangs 
on, and when he 
gets to the end 
of the journey 
thinks he has 
been having 

some great fun. 

The boy has his own small axe, and is all eagerness to prove 
his virtues as a woodsman. He whacks away energetically at some 
of the young growths, and when he brings a sapling four inches 
through to the ground he is triumphant, and wants all the others to 
look and see what he has done. He finds himself getting into quite 
a sweat over his work, and he has to roll up his earlaps and get 
his overcoat off and hang it on a stump. Then he digs into the 
work again. 

In time the labor becomes monotonous to him, and he is moved 
to tramp through the snows and investigate the work of the others. 
There is his father making a clean, wide gash in the side of a great 
hemlock. Every blov/ tells, and seems to go just where he wanted 
it to. The boy wonders why, when he cuts off a tree, he makes his 
cut so jagged. He stands a long time watching his father's chips fly. 



^Q THE FARMERS BOY. 

and then gains a safe distance to see the tree tremble and totter as 
the opposite cuts deepen, at the base, near its heart. What a mighty 
crash it makes when it falls! How the snow flies and the branches 
snap ! The boy is awed for the moment, then is fired with enthu- 
siasm, and rushes in with his small axe to help trim off the branches. 
After a time there comes a willingness that his father should finish 
the operation, and he wanders off to see how the others are get- 
ting on. 

By and by he stirs up the neighborhood with shouts to the effect 
that he has found some tracks. His mind immediately becomes 
chaotic with ideas of hunting and trapping. Now that he has 
begun to notice, he finds frequent other tracks, and some, he is 
pretty sure, are those of foxes and some of rabbits and some of 
squirrels. Why, the woods are just full of game! — he will bring 
out his box trap to-morrow, and the certainty grows on him that 
he will not only get some creatures that will prove a pleasant 
addition to the family larder, but will have some furs nailed up 
on the side of the barn that will bring him a nice little sum of 
pocket money. 

That evening he brought out the box trap and got it into 
practice, and made all the younger children wild with excitement 
over the tracks he had seen and his plans for trapping. They all 
wanted a share, and were greatly disappointed the next day when 
their father would not let them go too. 

The boy set his trap, and moved it every few days to what he 
thought would prove a more favorable place, but he had no luck 
to boast of. Yet he caught something three times. The first time 



WINTER. 



21 



he had the trap set in an evergreen thicket in a little space almost 
bare of snow. He was pleased enough, one day, to find the trap 
sprung, and at once became all eagerness to know what he had 
inside. He pulled out the spindle at the back and looked in, but 
the tiny hole did not let in light enough. Very cautiously he lifted 
the lid a trifle. Still nothing was to be seen, and he feared the 
trap had sprung itself. When he ventured to raise the lid a bit 
more, a little, slim-legged field mouse leaped out. The boy clapped 
the lid down hard, but the mouse hopped away, and in a flash had 




Ruhhinir down Old Billv. 



22 



THE FARMER'S BOY. 



disappeared in a hole at the foot of a small tree. The boy was 
disappointed in having even such a creature escape him. 

The next time, whatever it was he caught gnawed a hole through 
the corner of the box, and had gone about its business when our 




, / ■/; ink of sap. 

boy made his morning visit to the trap. Then he took the trap 
home and lined the inside with tin. 

He had no luck for some days after, and finally forgot the trap 
altogether. It was not till spring that he happened upon it again. 
He felt a tingle of the old excitement in his veins when he saw 
that the lid was down. He opened it with all the caution born 
of experience, but the red squirrel which was within had been long 



WINTER. 23 

dead ; and when the boy thought of its slow death by starvation 
in that dark box, he felt that he never would want to trap any 
more in that way. 

The boy finds the woods much more enjoyable than the wood- 
pile when it is deposited in the home yard. He knows that as 
long as there is a stick of it left he will never have a moment of 
leisure that will not be liable to be interrupted with a suggestion 
that he 00 out and shake the saw awhile. The hardest woods, that 
make the hottest fires, are the ones that the saw bites into most 
slowly and are the most discouraging. The best the boy can do 
is to hunt out such soft wood as the pile contains, and all the small 
sticks. He makes some variety in his labor by piling up the sawed 
sticks in a bulwark to keep the wind off, only it has to be acknowl- 
edged that he never really succeeds in accomplishing this purpose. 
But the unsawed pile grows gradually smaller, and his folks are 
not so severe that they expect the boy to do a man's work or 
to keep at it as steadily. He stops now and then to play with 
the smaller children, and to go to the house to see what time it 
is or to get something to eat. Besides, his father works with him 
a good deal, and if there are times when the minutes go slowly, 
the days, as a whole, slip along quickly, and, before the boy is 
aware, winter is at an end if the woodpile isn't. 



PART II. 

SPRING. 



W 



ITH the coming of March comes 
spring, according to the almanac, 
but in New England the snow- 
storms and wintry gales hold sway- 
often to the edge of April. Yet 
you can generally look for some 
vigorous thaws before the end of 
the month. There are occasional 
days of such warmth and quiet that 
you can fairly hear the snow melt, 
and the air is full of the tinkle of 
running brooks. You catch the sound 
of a woodpecker tapping in the orch- 
ard, and the small boy tumbles into 
the house, jubilant over the fact that 
he has seen a bluebird flitting through 
the branches of the elm before the house. All the children make 
haste to run out into the vard to see the sight. Even the mother 
throws a shawl over her head and steps out on the piazza. 

" Yessir ! there he is!" says Tommy, excitedly. "That's a blue- 
bird, sure pop ! " 

(24) 




.■1 neio picture' paper. 



SPRING. 25 

Puddles have gathered in the soggy snow along the roadside, 
and the little stream in the meadow has overflowed its banks. When 
the boy perceives this, he becomes immediately anxious to get into 
his rubber boots and go wading. His mother has a doubtful opinion 
of these wadings, but it is such a matter of life and death to the 
boy that she has not the heart to refuse him, and contents herself 
with admonitions not to stay out too long, not to wade in too deep, 
not to get his clothes wet, etc., etc. 

The boy begins with one of the small puddles, for he has these 
cautions in his mind, but the scope of his enterprise continually en- 
larges, and he presently finds himself trying to determine just how 
deep a place he can get into without letting the water in over his 
boot-tops. He does not desist from the experiment until he feels a 
cold trickle down one of his legs, from which he concludes that he 
got in just a little too far that time, and he makes a hasty retreat. 
But he has made his mind easy on the point as to how deep he 
can go, and now turns his attention to poking about with a stick 
he has picked up. He is quite charmed with the way he can make 
the water and slush spatter with it. When he gets tired with this, 
and the accumulating wet begins to penetrate his clothing here and 
there, he adjourns to the meadow and sets his stick sailing down 
the stream there. It fills his heart with delight to see the way it 
pitches and whirls, and he slumps along the brook borders and 
shouts at it as he keeps it company. Later he returns to the road- 
way and makes half a dozen dams or more to stop the tiny rills 
that are coursing down its furrows. He does this with such 
serious thoughtfulness and with such frequent, studious pauses 



26 



THE FARMER'S BOY. 




Cutchiiii^' flood- loood. 



as would well fit the actions of some of the world's 2;reat phi- 
losophers. 

No doubt the boy is making discoveries and learning lessons; 
for the farm, with varied Nature always so close, is an excellent 
kindergarten, and the farm child is all the time improving its oppor- 
tunities after some fashion. 

When our boy goes indoors his mother shows symptoms of 
alarm over his condition. He thinks he has kept pretty dry, but 
his mother wants to know what on earth he's been doing to get 
so wet. • 

" Ain't been doin' nothin'," says Tommy. 

"Well, I should say so!" remarks his mother. "Here, you let 



SPRING. 27 

me sit you in this chair to kind o' drean off, while I pull off them 
soppin' mittens." 

She has to wring the mittens out at the sink before she hangs 
them on the line back of the stove. Next she pulls off the boy's 
boots, and stands him up while she takes off his overcoat, and lastly 
pushes him, chair and all, up by the fire, where he can put his feet 
on the stove-hearth. Tommy did not see the necessity for all this 
fuss. He felt dry enough, and all right ; yet, as long as his mother 
does not get disturbed to the chastising point, he finds a good deal 
of comfort in having her attend to him in this way. 

It was on one of these still, sunshiny March days that it occurred 
to the oldest boy of the household that it was about time for the 
sap to begin to run. He does not waste much time in making 
tracks for the shop, where he hunts up some old spouts and an 
auger. He will tap two or three of the trees near the house, any- 
way. There is no lack of helpers. All the smaller children are on 
hand to watch and advise him, and to fetch pans from the house 
and prop them up under the spouts. They watch eagerly for the 
appearance of the first drops, and when they sight them each tells the 
rest that " There they are ! " and " It docs run !" and they want their 
older brother to stop his boring at the next tree and come and look. 
But William feels that he is too old to show enthusiasm about such 
things, and he simply tells them that he guesses that he's " seen sap 
'fore now." The children take turns applying their mouths to the 
end of spout number one to catch the first drops that trickle down 
it. In days following they are frequent visitors to these tapped 
trees, with the avowed purpose of seeing how the sap is running; 



28 THE FARMER'S BOY. 

but it is to be noticed that at the same time they seem always to 
find it convenient to take a drink from a pan. 

In the more hilly regions of New England most of the farms 
have a sugar orchard on them, and the tree-tapping that begins 
about the house is soon transferred to the woods. The boy goes 
along, too — indeed, what work is there about a farm that he does 
not have a hand in, either of his own will or because he has to } 
But the phase I wish now to speak of is that found on the farms 
that possess no maple orchard. The boy sees that the trees about 
the house are attended to, as a matter of course, and he guards the 
pans and warns off the neighbors' boys when he thinks they are 
making too free with the pans' contents. Each morning he goes 
out with a pail, gathers the sap, and sets it boiling in a kettle on 
the stove. In time comes the final triumph, when, some morning, 
the family leaves the molasses pot in the cupboard, and they have 
maple sirup on their griddle-cakes. 

It is not every boy whose enterprise stops with the tapping of 
the shade trees in front of the house. On many farms there is an 
occasional maple about the fields, and sometimes there are a few in 
a patch of near woodland. In such a case the boy gathers a lot of 
elder-stalks while it is still winter, cleans out the pith, and shapes 
them into spouts. At the first approach of mild weather he taps the 
scattered trees and distributes among them every receptacle the 
house affords that does not leak, or whose leaks can be soldered or 
beeswaxed, to catch the sap. After that, while the season lasts, he 
and his brother swing a heavy tin can on a staff between them and 
make periodical tours sap-collecting. These frequent tramps through 




•^ 

ts 



SPRING. 29 

mud and snow in all kinds of weather soon become monotonously 
wearisome, and the boys usually find one season of this kind of ex- 
perience enough. 

With the going of the snow comes a mud spell that lasts fully a 
month. It takes you forever to drive anywhere with a team. It is 
dra.o;, drag, drag, and slop, sloj:), slop all the way. Even the home 
dooryard is little better than a bog, and the boy can never seem to 
step out anywhere without coming in loaded with mud — at least, so 
his mother says. She has continually to be warning him to keep 
out of the sitting-room, and at times seems to be thrown into as 
much consternation over some of his footprints that she finds on 
the kitchen floor as was Robinson Ctusoe over the discovery of that 
lone footprint in the sand. Just as soon as she hears the boy's 
shuffle on the piazza and catches sight of him coming in at the 
kitchen door, she says, " There, Willy, don't you come in till you've 
wiped your feet." 

" I have," says W^illy. 

'•'Why, just look at 'em!" his mother responds. "I should 
think you'd got about all the mud there was in the yard on 

em. 

" I never saw such sticky old stuff'," says Willy. " Vour broom's 

most wore out already." 

" Well," remarked his mother, " what are you gettin' into the mud 
for all over that way, every time you step out } Pa's laid down 
boards all around the yard to walk on. Why don't you go on 
them ? " 

"They ain't laid where I want to go," replies Willy. 



THE FARMERS BOY. 

" Anvwav," is his mother's final remark, " I can't have my kitchen 
floor mussed up by you trackin' in every five minutes." 

But the really severe experiences in this line come when the barn- 
yard is cleaned out. For several days the boy's shoes are "a si^ht," 
and his journeyings are accompanied with such an odor that his 
mother warns him off entirely from her domains. He is not allowed 
to walk in and get that piece of pie for his lunch, but has it handed 
out to him through the narrowly opened kitchen door. When meal- 
time comes he has to leave his shoes and overalls in the woodshed, 
and comes into the house in his stocking - feet. Even then his 
mother makes derogatory remarks, though he tells her he " can't 
smell anything." 

It is astonishing how quickly, after the snow goes, the green will 
clothe the fields, and how, with bursting l)uds and the first blossoms, 
all Nature seems teeming with life again. I think the sentiment of 
the boy is touched by this season more than by any other. The 
unfolding of all this new life is full of mysterious charm. It is a 
delight to tread the velvet v turf, to find the first flowers, to catch the 
oft-repeated sweetness of a phoebe's song, or the more forceful trill- 
ing of a robin at sundown. It is at nightfall that spring appeals to 
the boy most strongly. He can still feel the heat of the sun when 
it lingers at the horizon, and in the gentle warmth of its rays en- 
joys a run about the yard, and claps at the little clouds of midges 
that are sporting in the air. As soon as the sun disappears there 
is a gathering of cool evening damps, and from the swampy hol- 
lows come many strange pipings and croakings. The boy wonders 
vaguely about all the creatures that make these noises, and imitates 



SPRING. 



31 



their voices from the home lawn. When the dusk begins to deepen 
into darkness he is glad to get into the light and warmth of the 
kitchen. 

To tell the truth, our boy is rather afraid of the dark. Just what 




spring chickens. 



he fears is but dimly defined, though bears, thieves, and Indians are 
among the fearsome shades that people the night glooms. It does 
not take much of a noise, when he is out alone in the dark, to set his 
heart thumping, and his imagination pictures dreadful possibilities 



32 



THE FARMER'S BOY. 



in the shapes and movements that greet his eyesight. This fear is 
not eoniined to out-ol-doors. He has a notion that there may be a 
kirking savage in the pantry, or the cellar, or the dusky corners of 
the hallways, or, worst of all, under his bed. Those fears are most 




lVilio7v wliistles. 



vivid after he has been reading some tale of desperate adventure or 
of mystery, dark doings and evil characters. Very good books and 
papers often have in them the elements that produce these scary 
effects. These are the sources of his timidity, for dime-novel trash, 
althoup-h not altogether absent, is not common in the country. 
The boy does not usually acquire much of his fear from the talk of 
his fellows, and his parents certainly do not foster such feelings. It 



SPRING. 



33 



is undoubtedly his reading, mainly. He rarely feels fear if he has 
company, or if he is where there is light, or after he gets into bed — 
that is, unless there are noises. What makes these noises you hear 
sometimes in the night } You certainly don't hear such noises in 
the daytime. The boy does not mind rats. He knows them. They 
can race through the walls, and grit their teeth on the plastering, 
and throw all those bricks and thmgs, whatever they are, down 
inside there that they want to. But it's these creakings and crack- 
ings and softer noises, that you can't tell what they are, that are 
the trouble. The very best that you can do is to pull the covers 
up over your head and shiver into sleep again. But if the boy 
has frights, they are intermittent, for the most part, and soon 
forgotten. 

With the thawing of the snow on the hills and the early rains 
comes, each spring, a time of flood on all the brooks and rivers that 
no one appreciates more than the boy who is so fortunate as to have 
a home on their banks. Water, in whatever shape, possesses a fas- 
cination for the boy, if we except that for washing jnnposes. It 
does not matter whether it is a dirty puddle or a sparkling brook or 
the spirting jet at the highway watering-trough — he wants to paddle 
and splash in every one. He even sees a touch of the beautiful nnd 
sublime in water in some of its effects. There is a charm to him 
in the placid pond that mirrors every object along its banks, or, on 
brisker days, in the choppv waves that break the surface and curl 
up on the muddy shore. He likes to follow the course of a brook, 
and takes pleasure in noting the clearness of its waters and in watch- 
ing its crystal leaps. When spring changes the quiet streams into 



THE FARMER'S BOY. 
34 

muddy torrents, and they become foaming and wild and unfamiliar, 
the boy finds the sight impressive and exhilarating. 

But it is on the larger rivers that the floods have most meaning. 
The water sets back in all the hollows, and broadens into wide lakes 
on the meadows, and covers portions of the main road. The boy 
cuts a notch in a stick and sets his mark at the water's edge, that 
he may keep posted as to how fiist the river is rising. He gets out 
the spike pole and fishes out the flood-wood that floats within 
reach. If he is old enough to manage a boat, he rows out into the 
stream and hitches on to an occasional log or large stick that is 
sailinir along on the swift current. For this purpose, if he is alone, 
he has an iron hook fiistencd at the back end of the boat that he 
pounds into the log. It is hard, jerky work towing a log to shore, 
and he does not always succeed in landing his capture. Sometimes 
the hook will keep pulling out; sometimes the thing he hitches 
onto is too bulky or clumsy, and, after a long, hard pull, panting 
and exhausted, he finds himself getting so far downstream that he 
reluctantly knocks out the hook, rows inshore, and creeps in the 
eddies along the bank back to his starting place. There is just one 
trouble about this catching flood-wood — it increases the woodpile 
materially, and makes a lot of work, sawing and chopping, that the 
boy has little fancy for. 

In the early spring there is sometimes a long-continued spell of 
dry weather. In the woods the trees are still bare, and the sunlight 
has free access to the leaf-carpeted earth. At such a time, if a fire 
gets started among the shriveled and tinderlike leaves it is no easy 
task to put it out. Whole neighborhoods turn out to fight it, and 



SPRING. 



35 




The opciii)ii:^ of the fishi)!:^ season. 



several days and nights may pass before it is under control. The 
boy is among the first on the spot with his hoe, and immediately 
begins a vigorous scratching to clear a path in the leaves that the 
fire will not burn across. The company scatters, and sometimes the 
boy finds himself alone. Close in front, extending away in both 
directions, is the ragged fire line leaping and crackling. The woods 
are still, the sun shines bright, and there is a sense of mystery and 
danger in the presence of those sullen, devouring flames. Now 
comes a puff of wind that causes the fire to make a sudden dash 
forward and shrouds the boy with smoke. He runs back to a point 

6 



^5 THE FARMER'S BOY. 

of safety and listens to the far-off shouts of the men. The fire is 
across the path he hoed, and he picks a piece of birch to eat while 
he clambers up the hill to find company. 

When night comes the boy wanders off home, to do his work and 
eat supper. If he is allowed, he is out again with his hoe in the 
evening. The scene is full of a wild charm. From the somberness 
of the unburned tracts you look into the hot, wavering line of daz- 
zlin<^ flames and on into regions where linger many sparkling embers 
which the fire has not yet burned out, and now and then there is a 
pile of wood that is a great mass of glowing coals, and again the 
high stump of some dead tree that burns like a torch m the black- 
ness. The boy thinks the men do more talking and advising than 
work. He does not accomplish much himself The men keep to- 
gether, and he hangs about the dark, half-lighted groups, listens to 
what is said, and with the others does some desultory scratching to 
keep the fire from gaining new ground at the point they are guard- 
ing. By -and- by there comes a man hallooing his way through 
the woods to them, who has brought a milk-can full of coffee. 
Every man and boy takes a drink, and they all crack jokes and ex- 
change opinions with the bearer till he starts off to find the next 
group. Some of the men stay on guard all night, but the boy and 
his father, about ten o'clock, leave the crackle and darting of the 
flames behind them, and take a gloomy wood-road that leads toward 
home. There has been nothing very alarming in the day's adven- 
tures, but the boy never forgets the experience. 

Fire is fascinating to the boy in any form. He burned his 
fingers at the stove damper when he was a baby. He likes to look 




«^; 



K!S^T 



SPRING. 



37 



at the glow of a lamp ; and a candle, with its soft flicker and halo, 
is especially pleasing. Then those new matches his folks have got, 
" that go off with a snap and burst at once into a sudden blaze — he 
has never seen anything like them. They remind him of the de- 
lights of Fourth of July. 

A chief event of the spring is a bonfire in the garden. There is 
an accumulation of dead vines and old pea-brush and apple-tree trim- 
mings that often makes a large heap. The fire is enjoyable at what- 
ever time it comes, but it is at its best if they touch it off in the 
evening. The whole family comes out to see it then, and Frank 
fixes up a seat for his mother and the baby out of a board and some 
blocks, and invites some of the neighbors' boys to be on hand. He 
puts an armful of leaves under a corner of the pile and sets it going 
with some of those parlor matches. The neighbors' boys stand 
around and tell him how, and even offer to do it themselves. When 
the blaze fairly starts and begins to trickle up through the twigs 
above it the smaller children jump for joy and clap their hands, and 
run to get handfuls of leaves and scattered rubbish to throw on. 
Frank pokes the pile this way and that with his pitchfork, and the 
neighbors' boys light the ends of long sticks and wave them about 
in the air. Even the baby coos with delight. The father has a rake 
and does most of the work that is really necessary, while the boys 
furnish all the action and noise needful to make the occasion a suc- 
cess. When the blaze is at its highest and the heat penetrates far 
back, the company becomes quiet, and they stand about exchanging 
occasional words and simply watching the flames lick up the brush 
and flash upward and disappear amid the smoke and sparks that 



-g THE FARMER'S BOY. 

rise high toward the dark deeps of the sky. The frohc is resumed 
when the pile of brush begins to foil inward, and presently mother 
says she and the baby and the smallest children must go in. The 
latter protest, but they have to go, and not long after the embers of 
the fire are all raked together, and Frank and the neighbors' boys 
fool around a little longer, and get about a half-dozen final warm- 
ing-ups and then tramp olT homeward in whistling happiness. 

On the day following the garden is plowed and harrowed. Then 
the boy has to help scratch it over and even it off with a rake, and 
is kept on the jump all the time getting out seeds and planters and 
tools, that never seem to be in the right place at the right time. 

Meanwhile he induces his father to let him have a corner of the 
garden for his own, and gets his advice as to what he had best put 
in it to make his fortune. He scratches over the plot about twice 
as fine as the rest of the garden, and won't let any of the old hens 
that are hanging around looking for worms ccme near it. He has 
concluded that peas are the things to bring in money, but he is 
tempted to try three or four hills of potatoes between the rows 
after he has the peas in. He has saved space for a hill of water- 
melons, and, just to fill up the blanks, which seem rather large with 
nothing yet up, he puts in as a matter of experiment a number of 
other seeds here and there of one sort and another. He puts these 
in from time to time along when it comes handy and the thought 
occurs to him. He was somewhat astonished at the way things 
came up. Indeed, he thought they would never get done coming 
up, and they were pretty well mixed in their arrangement. He got 
so discouraged over the things that kept sprouting in one corner 



SPRING. 



39 



that he hoed the whole thing up on that spot and transplanted a 
few cabbages on it. He used to get his mother to come out and 
look at his garden-patch, and he enjoyed telling her his plans ; but 
he left that off for a while when the things became so erratic, and 
waited till he could thin them out and bring their proceedings within 
his comprehension. 

It is in spring, more than any other season, that the boy's ideas 
bud with new enterprises. He forgets most of them by the time 
he has them f^iirly started, and none of them are apt to have any 
pecuniary value. But that never damps his enthusiasm in rushing 
into new ones. The hunting fever is apt to take him pretty soon 
after the snow goes, and he makes a bow and whittles out some 

arrows and turns Indian. He may even visit 
the resorts of the hens and collect enough 
feathers to make a circlet to wear round 
his head. Then he goes off and hunts 
bears and things, and scalps the neigh- 
bors' boys. Sometimes, instead of 
being an Indian, he gets his father 
to saw out a wooden gun and 
turns pioneer. Then savages and 
wild animals both have to catch 
it. He will skulk around in the most 
approved fashion and say " Bang ! " for 
his gun every time he fires, and he will like enough kill half a hun- 
dred Indians and a dozen grizzly bears in one forenoon. He is 
fearless as you please — until night comes. 







A Hflssoni for the bah v. 




40 



THE FARMER'S BOY. 



Not all the boy's hunting is so mild as to stop at the killing off 
of bears and Indians. Sometimes he shoots his arrows at real, live 



■^^' 





Playing " Indian." 

things, or he has a rubber sling, or he practices throwing stones ; and 
does not resist the temptation to make the birds and squirrels, and 
possibly the cats and the chickens, his marks. It is true he rarely 
hits any of them ; and the sensitive boy, if he seriously hurts one 
of the creatures fired at, has a twinge of remorse. But there are 
those who will only glory in the straightness of their aim. There 
is something of the savage still in their nature, and they feel a 
sense of prowess and power in bringing down that wdiich, in spite 
of its life and movement, did not escape them. It is to them a 
much grander and more enjoyable thing than to hit a lifeless and 
unmovinof mark. 



SPRING. 



41 



The boys — at any rate many of them — are at times, in a thought- 
less way, downright cruel. See how they will bang about the old 
horse upon occasion ! They have no compunctions about drown- 
ing a cat or wringing the neck of a chicken, and will run half a mile 
to be present at a hog-killing. They have barely a grain of sym- 
pathy for the worm they impale on their fish-hooks ; they kill the 
grasshopper who will not give them "molasses"; they crush the 
butterfly's wings in catching it wnth their straw hats ; and they pull 
ofT insects' limbs to see them w^riggle, or to find out how the insect 
will get along without them. I will not extend the horrible list, 







0)t the 7i<av to pasture. 



42 



THE FARMER'S BOY. 



and I am not sure but that most boys would be guiltless of the 
majority of these charges. Howev^er, they are much too apt to 
plav the part of destroyers. This spirit is shown in the way the 
boy will whip off the heads of flowers along his path, if he has a 
stick in his hand, and the manner in which he gathers them when 
gathering happens to be his purpose. He never thinks of their life 
or of their beauty where they stand, or of the future. He picks 
them all, snaps off the heads, pulls them up by the roots — any way 
to get the whole thing in the shortest possible time. If the boy was 
as thorough as he is ruthless, you could never find more flowers 
of the same sort on that spot. This does not argue a total 
disregard for the flowers, but it is a pity to love a thing to de- 
struction. 

The first token of spring in the flower line that the boy brings 
into the house is probably a sprig of pussy-willow. The fuzzy catkins 
are to his mind very odd and interesting and pretty. The ground is 
still snow-covered, and they have started with the first real thaw. 
Before the pastures get their first green the boy goes off to find the 
new arbutus buds, that smell sweetest of all the flowers he knows, 
unless it may be honeysuckle, that comes later. Already by the 
brook are the queer skunk-cabbage blossoms, and the boy some- 
times pulls one to pieces, and even sniffs the odor, just to learn how 
bad it really is. He may find a stout, short-stemmed dandelion thus 
early open in some vrarm, grassy hollow, and a few days later the 
anemone's dainty cups are out in full and trembling on their slender 
stems with every breath of air. In pasture bogs and along the 
brooks are violets — mostly blue ; but in places there are yellow and 



SPRING. 



43 



white ones, ready to delight their finder. The higher and drier 
slopes of the pastures are in spots sometimes almost blue with the 
coarse bird-foot violets, while lower down the ground is as white 
with the multitudes of innocents as if there had been a light snow- 
fall. Along the roadways and fences the wild-cherry trees are 
clouded full of white petals, and in the woods are great dashes of 
white where the dogwoods have unfurled their blossoms. By the 
end of May the meadows are like a night sky full of stars, so thick 
are the dandelions, and on the rocks of the hillside the columbines 
sway, full of their oddly shaped, pendulous bells. In some damp 
woodpath the boy is filled with rejoicing by the finding of one of 
the rare lady's-slippers where he has been gathering wakerobin. The 
onlv other spring flower I will mention as of special interest to the 
boy is the Jack-in-the-pulpit, and that hardly seems a flower to him, 
it is so queer. 

Spring has three days with an individuality that makes them 
stand out among the rest. The ist 
of April is "April Fool's Day. The 
only idea the boy has about it is 
that the more things he can make 
the rest of the world think on that 
day are not so, the better. It has 
to be acknowledged that most of 
the tricks are not very clever or 
commendable, and the boy himself 
feels that he is sometimes getting 
uncomfortably close to lying. The 



■SK J 




.4 little lioitsekeepo: 



44 THE FARMER'S BOY. 

common form of fooling is to get a person to look at something 
that is not in sight. 

" Sec that crow out there ! " says the boy to his father, 

"Where.?" asks his father, when he looks out. 

"April fool!" shouts the boy, and he is pleased with the "slick" 
way he fooled his pa, for about half an hour, when he discovers that 
he has been walking around for he doesn't know how long with a 
slip of paper on his back that his sister pinned there ; and what he 
reads on it when he gets it off is "April fool!" He does not feel 
so happy then, but he saves the paper to pin on some one else. All 
day his brain is full of schemes to get people looking at the imagi- 
nary objects he calls their attention to, and at the same time he is 
full of suspicions himself, and you have to be very sharp and sudden 
to fool him. When night comes he rejoices in the fact that he has 
got one or two " fools " off on every member of the family, and there 
is no knowing what a nuisance he has made of himself among the 
rest of his friends. It gives him a grand good appetite, and he feels 
inclined to be quite conversational. His remarks, however, assume 
a milder tenor when he bites into a portly doughnut and finds it 
made of cotton. He is afraid his mother is trying to fool him. He 
wouldn't have thought it of her ! 

Soon after this day comes Fast Day. School " lets out," and 
there's meeting at the church, but most folks do not pay much 
attention to that, and, it being a holiday, they eat rather more 
than on other days, if anything, and they joke about its being 
" fast " in the sense that it is not slow. Our boy does what work 
he has to do, and then asks the privilege of going off to see some 



SPRING. 45 

Other boy and have some fun. However, that is a thing that hap- 
pens on all sorts of days. He is always ready with that request 
when he has leisure, and makes it oftentimes, too, when he has no 
leisure in any one's opinion but his own. 

The 30th of May is Decoration Day, and a company of sol- 
diers will come with a band and flags, and will decorate the graves 
of the soldiers in the little cemetery, and there will be singing 
and other exercises, and everybody will be there. The boy has his 
bouquet, and he is on the spot promptly and chatting with some 
of his companions. It may be the quiet of the early morning that 
is the appointed time. There are lines of teams hitched along the 
roadside, and two or three score of waiting people have gathered 
near the entrance. The occasion has something of the solemnity 
of a funeral, and even the boys lower their voices as they talk. The 
sound of a drum and fife is heard around the turn of the road ; the 
soldiers, under their drooping flag, approach and file into the ceme- 
tery. A song, an address, and a prayer follow — all very impressive 
to the boy, out there under the skies with the wide, blossoming 
landscape about. Finally, he lays his flowers with the others on 
the graves, the soldiers form in line, the fife pipes once more, the 
drum beats, and off they go down the road. Then the people 
begin a more cheerful visiting, and there is a cramping of wheels 
as the teams turn to go homeward. The boy, with his friends, 
pokes about among some of the old stones, and then lingers along 
in the rear of the scattered groups that are taking the road that 
leads to the village. 



PART III. 

SUMMER. 

THE boy feels that summer has really come about the time 
he gets a new straw hat and begins to go barefoot. 
When he first gets on the earth without shoes and stock- 
ings he is as frisky as are the cows when, after the winter's sojourn 
in the barn, they are let out to go to pasture for the first time. 
The boy remembers very well how he nearly ran his legs oft" on 
that occasion, for the cows wanted to career all through the neigh- 
borhood, and they kicked and capered and ran and hoisted their 
tails in the air, and were as bad as a circus broke loose. 

The boy would have gone barefoot some weeks before, only 
he could not get his mother to understand how warm the earth 
really was. It is cooler now than he thought, but he gets into a 
glow runnmg, and in a few days the exposure toughens his feet so 
that he can stand almost anything — anything but shoes and stock- 
ings. He hates to put those uncomfortable things on, and, when 
he does, is glad to kick them off at the earliest opportunity. Even 
the first frosts of autumn do not at once bring the shoes out. He 
will drive the cows up the whitened lane, and slip shivering along 
in the tracks brushed half clear of frost by the herd, certain that 
he will be entirely comfortable a little later when the sun gets 

well up. 

(46) 



SUMMER. 



47 



But the joy of bare feet is not altogether complete even in 
summer. About half the time the boy goes with a limp. He has 
hurt his toe, cut his heel, or met with some like mishap. There is 
something always lying around for him to step on, and in the late 
summer certain wicked burs ripen in the meadow that have hooks 
to their prickles, that 
hurt enough going in, 
but are, oh, so much 
worse pulling out ! 
The boy never likes to 
walk on newly mown 
land on account of 
the stiff grass stubs 
that cover it. Yet he 
can manage pretty well 
bv sliding his feet 
along and making the 
stubble lie flat when he 
steps on it. However, 
the gains of bare feet 
certainly much more 
than offset the losses, 
to his mind ; for he 
can tramp and wade almost everywhere and in all kinds of weather, 
with no fear of tearing his stockings, muddying his shoes, or " get- 
ting his feet wet." 

He appreciates this going barefoot most, perhaps, after a rain- 




Ach'isitii^ tilt' kirrd />ov. 



48 



THE FARMERS BOY. 



Storm. You have no idea, unless you have been a boy yourself, 
what fun it is to slide and spatter through the pools and puddles 
of the roadway. There is the boy's mother, for instance— she fails 
to have the mildest kind of appreciation of it. She has even less. 




Wai/i^x' for the diiuici- horn. 

if that is possible, when the boy comes in to her after he has 
astonished himself by a sudden slip that seats him in the middle 
of one of these puddles. 

When the air, after a storm, is very still, the boy is sometimes 
impressed by the apparent depth of tliese shallow pools. They 
seem to go down miles and miles, and he can see the clouds and 
sky reflected in their clear deeps. He is half inclined to keep 



SUMMER. 4g 

away from their edges, lest he should fall over and go down and 
down till he was drowned among those far-off cloud reflections. 

Another roadway sentiment the boy sometimes entertains is con- 
nected with the ridges of dirt thrown up by the wagon- wheels. 
Their shadows make pictures to him as of a great line of jagged 
rocks — like the wild coast of Norway in his geography. He feels 
like an explorer as he follows the ever-changing craggedness of 
their outlines. 

I mentioned that the boy had a new straw hat with the be- 
ginning of summer. You would not think it two days afterward. 
It had by then lost its store manner and had taken to itself an in- 
dividual shape all its own. It did nut take long for the ribbon to 
begin to fly loose on the breezes, and then the colt took a bite 
out of the edge, and a general dissolution set in. The boy used 
it to chase grasshoppers and butterflies with, and one day he 
brought it home half full of strawberries he had picked in a field. 
On another occasion he utilized it to catch pollywogs in when he 
was wading, and he hastened its ruin by using it as a ball on sum- 
mer evenings to throw in the air. He thought, one night, he had 
put it past all usefulness when, not thinking where he had placed 
it, he went and sat down in the chair where it was. You would not 
have known it for a hat when he picked it up, though he straight- 
ened it out after a fashion and concluded it would serve for a 
while longer, anyway. But things presently got to that desperate 
pass where the brim was gone and there was a bristly hole in the 
top, and " the folks " saw the hat could not possibly last the 
summer through, and the next time his father went to town he 



50 



THE FARMER'S BOY. 




Eating clover blossovis. 

boucrht the boy a new one. Of course, he told him to be more 
careful with this than with the old one, when he gave it to him. 

The summer was not far advanced when the boy became anx- 
ious as to whether the water had warmed up enough in the streams 
to make it allowable to go in swimming. As for the little rivers 
among the hills, they never did get warmed up, and in the hottest 
spells of midsummer it made the boy's teeth chatter to jump into 
their cold pools. But there was a glowing reaction after the 
plunge, and if he did not stay in too long he came out (juite en- 
livened by his bath. The bathing places on these woodland streams 
are often quite picturesque. It may be a spot where the stream 
widens into a little pond hemmed in by walls of green foliage, 



SUMMER. 



51 



whose branches in places droop far out over the water. It may 
be in a rocky gorge strewn with bowlders, where the stream fills 
the air with a continual roar and murmur as it dashes down the 
rapids and plunges from pool to pool. On the large rivers of the 
valleys the swimming places have usually muddy shores and a 
willow-screened bank, and there are logs to float on or an old boat 
to push about. In favorable weather the boys will go in swimming 
every evening, and they make the air resound for half a mile about 
with their shouts and splashings. 




/;/ .f7i'/ww/;;o 



-2 THE FARMER'S BOY. 

June comes in with lots of work in the planting line. The boy 
has to drop fertilizer and drop potatoes some days from morning 
till night, by which time he is ready to drop himself. In corn plant- 
ing he has his own bag of tarred corn and his hoe, and takes the 
row next to his father's. For a spell he may keep up with the 
rest, but as the day advances he lags behind, and his father plants 
a few hills occasionally on the boy's row to encourage him. One 
of the things a boy soon becomes an adept at is leaning on his hoe. 
He naturally does this most when he is alone in the field and not 
liable to sudden interruptions in his meditations. At such times 
he gets lonesome and has " that tired feeling," and gets to wonder- 
ino- whv the dinner horn doesn't blow. You would not think a hoe 
an easy thing to lean on ; but the boy will stand on one leg, with 
the hoe-handle hooked under his shoulder, for any length of time. 

The corn is no sooner in the ground than the crows begin to 
happen around to investigate. They will pull it even after it gets 
an inch or two high and snap off the kernel at the roots, and it 
seems sometimes as if they rather liked the flavor of the tar put 
on to destroy their appetite. The boy's indignation waxes high 
and he wishes he had a gun or a pistol, or something, to " fix " those 
old crows. His mother does not like firearms. She is afraid he 
will shoot himself; but she gives him some old clothes, and he 
goes off to the shop to tack a scarecrow together and stuff him 
with hay. When his father appears and pretends to be scared by 
the scarecrow's terrible figure, the boy is quite elated. After supper 
he and his mother and the smaller children go out in the field 
and set the man up, and the boy shakes hands with him and 



SUMMER. 55 

holds a little conversation with iiim. His small brothers and sis- 
ters are sure the crows won't " dast " to come around there any more, 
and they are kind of scared of the old scarecrow themselves. 

The days wax hotter and hotter as the season advances, and the 
boy presently gets down to the simplest elements in the clothing 
line. Indeed, if his folks do not insist on something more elabo- 
rate, he goes about entirely content in a shirt and a pair of over- 
alls. His hair is apt to grow rather long between the cuttings his 
mother gives it, and about this time he looks up an uncle or a 
cousin who is an adept in the hair-cutting line, and gets a tight clip 
that leaves him as bald as his most ancient ancestor. He feels 
delightfully cool, anyway, and looks don't count much with him at 
that age. 

As soon as the first plowing was done in the spring the onions 
were sowed. Their little green needles soon jirickled uj:) through 
the ground, and now they had the company of a multitude of 
weeds, and must be hoed and weeded out. One thing the boy 
never quite gets to understand is the curious fact that weeds, at 
first start, will grow twice as fast as any useful crop. He wishes 
weeds had some value. All you'd have to do would be to let them 
grow. They'd take care of themselves. 

In the case of the onions the hoeing-out part is not very bad, 
but when you get down on your hands and knees to scratch the 
weeds out of the rows with your fingers your trouble begins. The 
boy says his back aches. His father comforts him by telling him 
that he guesses not — that he's too young to have the backache — 
that he'd better wait till he's fifty or sixty, and his joints get stiff 



54 



THE FARMER'S BOY. 



and he has the rheumatism ; then he'll have somethino; to talk 
about. 

But the boy knows very well that his back does ache, and the 
sun is as hot again as it was when he was standing up, and his head 
feels as if it were going to drop off. He gets up once in a while 
to stretch, and to see. if there are any signs of his mother's wanting 







,j^' 



.rw- 



IVt'edimr ouious. 



him at the house, or hens around that ought to be chased off, or 
anything else going on that will give him a chance for a change. 
He bends to his work again presently, and tries various changes 
from the plain stoop, such as one knee down and the other raised 
to support the chest, or a sit down in the row and an attempt to 
weed backward. When left to himself he takes long rests at the 
ends of the rows, lying in the grass on his back under the shadow 



SUMMER. 



55 



of an apple tree, or he gets thirsty and goes in the house for a drink. 
He is afflicted with thirst a great deal when he is weeding onions, 
and gets cooky-hungry remarkably often, too. 

His most agreeable respite while weeding occurs when he dis- 
covers that the neighbor's boy has come out and is at work just 
over the fence. He throws a lump of dirt at him to attract his 
attention, and then they exchange "hulloes!" 

They soon come together and lean on the fence and compare 
gardens, and likely enough get to boasting and on the borders of a 
quarrel before they are through. Our boy goes back to work in 
time, and his aches are not so severe afterward — at least, so long 
as he has the neighbor's boy over the fence to call at. 

When the boy's father goes away from home, to be gone all 
day, he is apt to set the boy a " stent." 

" You put into it, now," he says, " and hoe those eighteen rows 
of corn, and then you can play the rest of the day." 

The boy is inclined to be dubious when he contemplates his 
task ; it doesn't look to him as if he could get it done in the 
whole day. But he makes a start, and concludes it is not so bad, 
after all. He keeps at work with considerable perseverance, and 
only stops to sit on the fence for a little while at the end of every 
other row, and once to go up the lane to pick a few raspberries 
that have turned almost black. As the rows dwindle he becomes 
increasingly exuberant, and whistles all through the last one ; and 
when that is done, and he puts the hoe over his shoulder and 
marches home, he has not a care in the world. 

He made up his mind early in the day that he would go fish- 



56 



THE FARMER'S BOY. 



ing when he was free, and now he digs some worms back of the 
shop, gets out his pole, and hunts up his best friend. The best 
friend is watering tobacco. He can't go just then, but if Tommy 
will pitch in and help him for about fifteen minutes, he'll have 
that job done and will be with him. 

The boys make the water fly, and it is not long before they 
and their poles and their tin bait-box are at tb.e river side. The 
water just dimples in the light breeze. The warm afternoon sun- 
light shines in the boys' faces and glitters on the ripples. They 
conclude, after a little while, that it is not a good afternoon for fish- 
ing, and think wading will prove more profitable. As a result, they 
get their " pants " wet and their jackets spattered, though where on 
earth all that water came from they can't make out. They thought 
they were careful. They are afraid their mothers will make some 
unpleasant remarks when they get home. It seems best they 
should roll down their trousers and give them a chance to dry a 
little before they have to leave. Meanwhile they do not suffer 
for lack of amusement, for they find a lot of rubbish to throw into 
the water, and some fiat stones to skip, and some lucky-bugs to 
catch, and lastly Charlie Thompson's spotted dog shows himself 
on the bank, and they entice him down to the shore and take 
to wading again, and have great fun, and get wetter than ever. 

As they walked home. Tommy said, " Let's go fishing again, 
some day," and Sammy agreed without any hesitation. 

They caught not even a shiner this time, but on some occasions 
they brought home a perch or two and a bullhead and a sucker, 
strung on a willow twig. I\ainy days were those on which they 



SUMMER. 



57 




m 




were freest to go fishing, and on such days the fish were supposed 
to bite best. The boy seemed perfectly willing to don an old coat 
and an old felt hat and spend a whole drizzling morning at almost 
any time slopping along the muddy margin of the river. No one 
could accuse him of being over-fastidious. 

At some time in his career the boy was pretty sure to bring 
home a live fish in his tin lunch-pail and turn him loose in the 
water-tub at the barn ; and he might catch a dozen or two min- 
nows in a pool left landlocked by a fall of the water, and put 
those in. He would see them chasing around in there, and the 
old big fish lurking, very solemn, in the darkest depths, and he fed 



58 



THE FARMER'S BOY. 



them bits of bread and worms, and planned for them a very happy 
and comfortable life till they should be grown up and he was 
ready to eat them. But they disappeared in time, and there was 




Fis/ting. 

not one left. The boy has an idea they must have eaten each 
other, and then the cow swallowed the last one. If it wasn't that, 
what was it } 

In the early summer strawberries are ripe. They are the first 
berries to come that amount to anything. You can pick a few 
wintergreen and partridge berries on the hillsides in spring, but 
those hardly count. The boy always knows spots on the farm 
where the strawberries grow wild, and when, some early morning, 



SUMMER. 59 

he goes up with the cows and is late to breakfast, it proves he 
has been tramping in the pasture after berries. He has pushed 
about among the dew-laden tangles of the grass until he is as 
wet as if he had been in the river, but he is in a glowing tri- 
umph on his return over the red clusters he pulls from his hat 
to display to the family. 

Probably some farmer in the neighborhood raises strawberries 
for market, and pays two cents a quart for picking. If so, the boy 
can not rest easy till his folks agree to let him improve this chance 
to gain pocket money, which is a thing he never fails to be short 
of He will get up at three o'clock in the morning and carry 
his breakfast with him in order to be on hand with the rest of the 
children on the field at daybreak. His eagerness cools off in a few 
days, and it is only with the greatest difficulty that the employer 
can get his youthful help to stick to the work through the season. 
They have eaten the berries till they are sick of them ; they are 
tired of stooping, and they have earned so much that their longings 
for wealth are satisfied. They are apt to get to squabbling about 
rows while picking, and to enliven the work on dull days by 
"sassing"one another. The proper position for picking is a stoop- 
ing posture, but when the boy comes home you can see by the 
spotted pattern on the knees and seat of his trousers that he had 
made some sacrifices to comfort. The proprietor of the berry fields, 
and all concerned, are glad when they get to the end of the season. 

When the boy got up so early those June mornings he was in 
time to hear the air full of bird-songs as it would be at no other 
time through the day. What made the birds so madly happy as 



6o 



THE FARMER'S BOY. 



soon as the east caught the first tints of the coming sun ? The 
village trees seemed fairly alive with the songsters, and every bird 
was doing his best to outdo the rest. Most boys have not a very 
wide acquaintance with the birds, but there are certain ones that 
never fail to interest them. The boy's favorite is pretty sure to be 




A faithful follower. 

the bobolink — he is such a happy fellow ; he reels through the air 
in such delight over his singing and the sunny weather. How his 
song gurgles and glitters ! How he swells out his throat ! How pret- 
tily he balances and sways on the woody stem of some tall meadow 
flower! He has a beautiful coat of black and white, and the boy 



SUMMER. 6 1 

wonders at the rusty feathers of his mate, which looks Hke an en- 
tirely different bird. As the season advances bobolink chani^es, and 
not for the better. His handsome coat gets dingy, and he loses his 
former gayety. He has forgotten almost altogether the notes of 
his earlier song of tumbling happiness, and croaks harshly as he 
stuffs himself on the seeds with which the fields now teem. Ease 
and high living seem to have spoiled his character, just as if he had 
been human. Before summer is done the bobolinks gather in com- 
panies, and wheel about the fields in little clouds preparatory to 
migrating. Sometimes the whole flock flies into some big tree, and 
from amid the foliage come scores of tinkling notes as of many tiny 
bells jingling. The boy sees no more of the bobolinks till they 
return in the spring to once more pour forth their overflowing joy 
on the blossom-scented air of the meadows. 

One of the other birds that the boy is familiar with is the lark, 
a coarse, large bird with two or three white feathers in its tail ; but 
the lark is too sober to interest him much. Then there is the cat- 
bird, of sleek form and slatey plumage, flitting and mewing among 
the shadows of the apple-tree boughs. The brisk robin, who always 
has a scared look and therefore is out of character as a robber, he 
knows very well. Robin l)uilds a rough nest of straws and mud in 
the crotches of the fruit trees, and he has a habit of crying in sharp 
notes at sundown, as if he were afraid sorrow was coming to him in 
some shape. The robin has a caroling song, too, but that the boy 
is not so sure of separating from the music of the other birds. 

He always knows the woodpeckers by their long bills and the 
way they can trot up and down the tree trunks, bottom-side up. 



62 THE FARMER'S BOY. 

or anyhow. He knows the bluebird by its color and the phoebe 
by its song. The orioles are not numerous enough for him to have 
much acquaintance with, but he is familiar with the dainty nest they 
swing far out on the tips of the branches of the big shade trees. He 
sees numbers of little birds when the cherries ripen and the peapods 
fill out that are as bright as glints of golden sunlight. They vary 
in their tinting and size, but he calls them all yellow-birds, and has 
a poor opinion of them, for he rarely sees them except when they 
are stealing. 

Along the water courses he now and then glimpses a heavy- 
headed kingfisher sitting in solemn watchfulness on a limb or 
making a startling, headlong plunge into a pool. Along shore the 
sandpipers run about in a nervous way on their thin legs, always 
teetering and complaining, and taking fright and flitting away like 
a shot at the least sound. On the borders of the ponds the boy 
sometimes comes upon a crane or a blue heron meditating on one 
leg up to his knee in water. Off he goes in awkward flight, trailing 
his long legs behind him. On the ponds, too, the wild ducks alight 
in the fall and spring on their journeys South and North. There 
may be as many as twenty of the compact, glossy-backed creatures 
in a single flock, but a much smaller number is more common. The 
swallows, on summer days, are to be found skimming over the 
waters of the streams and ponds, and they make flying dips and 
twitter and rise and fall and twist and turn, and seem very happy. 
They have holes in a high bank in the vicinity, and if the boy 
thinks he wants to get a collection of birds' eggs he arms himself 
with a trowel, some day, and climbs the steep dirt bank to dig them 



SUMMER. 



63 



out. The holes go in about an arm's length, and at the end is a 
rude little nest, and some white eggs with such tender shells that 
the boy breaks many more than he succeeds in carrying away. 




Tivo 7vho have been a-bo7-ro7vit7g. 



He stores such eggs as he gathers from time to time in small 
wooden or pasteboard boxes, with cotton in the bottoms, until too 
many of them get broken, when he throws the whole thing away. 



64 



THE FARMER'S BOY. 



His interest has been destructive and temporary, and he would 
much better have studied in a different fashion, or turned his talent 
to something else. 

Several other birds are still to be mentioned that get his atten- 
tion. There are the humming birds, that are so small and that 
buzz about among the blossoms and prick them with their long 
bills, and poise so still on their misty wings, and have hues of 
rainbow in their feathers, and flash out of sight across the yard 
in no time when they see you. There are the barn and chimney 
swallows that you notice most at twilight, darting in tangled 
flights in upper air or skimming low over the fields in twittering 
alertness. How they worry the old cat as she crouches in the 
hayfield ! Again and again they almost touch her head in their 
circling, but they are so swift and changeful that the cat has no 
chance of catching them. Then there is the kingbird the boy 
very much admires. He is a vigorous, well-looking fellow, with 
an admirable antipathy for tyrants and bullies. Size makes no 
difference with him. He puts the crow to ungainly flight ; he fol- 
lows the hawk, and you can see him high in air darting down at 
the great bird's back again and again ; and he does not even fear 
the eagle. In corn -planting time the whip-poor-will makes the 
evening air ring with his lonely calls, and the boy has sometimes 
seen his dusky form standing lengthwise of a fence rail just as he 
was about to flit far off across the fields and renew more distantly 
his whistling cry. The most distressing bird of all is the little 
screech-owl. His tremulous and long-drawn wail susfcfests that 
some one human is out there in the orchard crying out in his last 



SLIMMER. 



65 



feeble agonies. To put it mildly, the boy is scared when he hears 
the screech-owl. 

The great and only holiday of the summer is Fourth of July. 
The boy very likely does not know or especially care what the 
philosophic meaning of the day is. As he understands it, the occa- 
sion is one whose first requirement is lots of noise. To furnish this 




**»«___. 



77/1^ Fourth of July. 

in plenty, he is willing to begin the day by getting up at midnight 
to parade the village street with the rest of the boys, and toot horns 
and set off firecrackers, and liven up the sleepy occupants of the 
houses by making particular efforts before each dwelling. They 
have a care in their operations to be on guard, that they may 
hasten to a safe distance if any one rushes out to lecture or chas- 
tise them ; but if all continues quiet within doors they will hoot 



66 THE FARMER'S BOY. 

and howl about for some time, and even blow up the mail-box 
with a cannon cracker, or commit other mild depredations, to add 
to the glory of the occasion. When some particularly brilliant 
brain conceived the idea of getting all the bovs to take hold of 
an old mowing machine and gallop it through the dark street in 
full clatter, it may be supposed that the final touch was given to 
American independence and liberty. It was not all the boys that 
went roaming around thus, and it was the older and rougher ones 
who were the leaders. The smaller boys did not enter very heartily 
into all of the fun, though they dared not openly hang back ; and 
when the stars paled and the first gray approach of dawn be- 
gan to lighten the east, the little fellows felt very sleepy and 
lonely in spite of the company and noise. They were glad enough 
when, soon after, the band broke up and they could steal away 
home and to bed. The day itself was enlivened by much popping 
of firecrackers and torpedoes in farm dooryards — by a village 
picnic, in the afternoon, and by a grand setting off in the even- 
ing of pin -wheels, Roman candles, a nigger -chaser, and a rocket. 
After the rocket had gone up into the sky with its wild whirr and 
its showering of sparks, and had toppled and burst and burned 
out into blackness, the day was ended, and the boy retired with the 
happiness that comes from labor done and duty well performed. 

The work of all others that fills the summer months is haying. 
In the hill towns the land is stony and steep, and much of it is 
cut over with scythes, but the majority of New England farmers 
do most of their grass-cutting with mowing machines. A boy will 
hardly do much of the actual mowing in either case until he is in 



SUMMER. 



67 



his teens ; but long before that he is called on to turn the grind- 
stone — an operation that precedes the mowing of each fresh field. 
He gets pretty sick of that grindstone before the summer is 
through. 

He likes to follow after the mowing machine. There is some- 
thing enlivening in its clatter, and he enjoys seeing the grass 
tumble backward as the darting knives strike their stalks. He 
does not care so much about following his father when he mows 
with a scythe ; for then he is expected to carry a fork and spread 




Gt'ttiuo; readv to nunv. 



the swath his father piles up behind him. On the little farms 
machines are lacking to a degree, and the boys have to do much 
of the turning and raking by hand. T^inally, they have to borrow 



68 



THE FARMER'S BOY. 



a horse to get it in. The best-provided farmer usuallv does some 
borrowing, and there are those who are running all the time — that 
is, they keep the boy running ; boys are made for running. The 
boy does not like this job very well, for the lender is too often 
doubtful in his manner, if not in his words. 

On still summer days the hay field is apt to be a very hot 
place. The hay itself has a gray glisten, and the low -lying air 
shimmers with the heat. It is all very well if you can ride on 
the tedder or rake, but it makes the perspiration start if you have 
to do any work by hand. Vou do not have to be much of a boy 
to be called on by your father to rake up the scatterings l)ack of 
the load, and you find you have to be on the jump all the time 




^|j|P<St^^^/*— •'' *J*«^'-<'| 






Oil the hav tcddrr. 



SUMMER. 69 

to keep up. If you can rake, you are large enough to be on the 
load and tread the hay into place as it is thrown up. It is not 
till you are pretty well grown that you have the strength to do 
the pitching on. Whatever the boy does in the field, in the barn 
his place is up under the roof " mowing away." The place is dusky, 
and the dust flies, and a cricket or some uncomfortable many- 
legged creature crawls down your back ; it is hot and stifling, and 
the hay comes up about twice as fast as you want it to. Before 
the load is quarter off you begin to listen for the welcome scratch 
of your father's fork on the wagon rack that signals the nearing 
of the bottom of the load. Even then you have to creep all 
around under the eaves to tread the hay more solidly. You are 
glad enough when you can crawl down the ladder and go into 
the house and give your head a soal: under the pump, and get a 
drink of water. There's nothing tastes much better than water 
when you are dry that way, unless it is sweetened u^ater that you 
take in a jug right down to the hayfield wnth you. 

I do not wish to give the impression that haying is made up 
too much of sweat and toil, and that the boy finds it altogether 
a season of trial and tribulation. It is not at all bad on cool 
days, and some boys like the jumping about on load and mow. 
There is fun in the jolting, rattling ride in the springless wagon 
to the hayfield, and when the haycocks in the orchard are rolled 
up for the night the boys have great sport turning somersaults 
over them. Then there are exhilarating occasions when the sky 
blackens, and from the distant horizon comes the flashing and 
muttering of an approaching thunderstorm. Everybody does his 



70 



THE FARMER'S BOY. 



best then ; you race the horseS; and the hay is rolled up and goes, 
forkful after forkful, twinkling- up on the load in no time. But 
the storm is likely to come before you have done. There is a 
spattering of great drops, that gives warning, and a dash of cold 
wind, and everybody — teams and all — will be seen racing helter- 
skelter to the barns. You are in luck if you get there before the 
whole air is filled with the flying drops. It is a pleasurable excite- 
ment, anyway, and you feel very comfortable, in spite of your wet 
clothes, as you sit on the meal-chest talking with the others, listen- 
insr to the rollinfj thunder and the rain rattlinof on the roof and 
splashing into the yard from the eaves-spout. You look out of the 
big barn doors into the sheeted rain that veils the fields with its 
hurrying mists, and see its half-glooms lit up now and then by the 
pallid flashes of the lightning. Then comes a burst of sunlight, 
the rain ceases, and as the storm recedes a rainbow arches its 
shredded tatters. All Nature glitters and drips and tinkles. The 
trees and fields have the freshness of spring ; the tip of every leaf 
and every blade of grass twinkles with a diamond drop of water. 
The boy runs out with a shout to the roadside puddles. The 
chickens leave the shelter of the sheds, and rejoice in the number 
of worms crawling about the hard-packed earth of the dooryard,. 
and all kinds of birds begin singing in jubilee. 

But whatever incidental pleasures there may be in haying, it 
is generally considered a season of uncommonly hard work, and 
at its end the farm family thinks itself entitled to a picnic and a 
season of milder labor. The picnic idea usually develops into a 
plan to spend a whole day at some resort of picnickers, where yoa 



SUMMER. 



71 



have to pay twenty-five cents for admission — children half price. 
Of course, there are all sorts of ways that you can spend a good 
deal more than that at these places, but it is mostly the young 
men, who feel called upon to demonstrate their fondness for the 
girls they have brought with them, that patronize the extras. The 




The bov rakes after. 

farm family is economical ; it carries feed for its horses and a big 
lunch-basket packed full for itself, and simply goes in for all the 
things that are free; though Johnny and Tommy are allowed to 
draw on their meager supply of pocket money to the extent of 
five cents each for candy. There are swings to swing in and tables 



7^ 



THE FARMER'S BOY. 



to eat on in a grove, and, if it is by a lake or river, there are boats 
to row in and fish to catch, only you can't catch them. Meanwhile 
the horses are tied conveniently in the woods, and spend the day 
kicking and switching at the flies that happen around. Toward 
evening the wagon is backed about and loaded up, the horses 
hitched into it, and everybody piles in and noses are counted, and 
off they go homeward. The sun sets, the bright skies fade, and 
the stars sparkle out one by one and look down on them as the 
horses jog along the glooms of the half-wooded, unfamiliar road- 
ways. Some of the children get down under the seats and croon 
in a shaking gurgle as the wagon jolts their voices; and they shut 
their eyes and fancy the wagon is going backward — oh, so swiftly! 
Then they open their eyes, and there are the tree leaves fluttering 
overhead and the deep night sky above, and they see they are 
going on, after all. When they near home they all sit up on the 
seats once more and watch for familiar objects along the road. 
There is the house at last ; the horses turn into the yard ; they all 
alight, and in a {<i\\ minutes a lamp is lighted in the kitchen. A 
neighbor has milked the cows. There are the full pails on the 
bench in the back room. The children are so tired they can hardlv 
keep their eyes open, but they must have a slice of bread and but- 
ter all around, and a piece of pie. Then, tired but happy, they 
bundle off to bed. 

Not every excursion of this kind is to a public pleasure resort. 
Sometimes the family goes after huckleberries or blackberries, or 
for a day's visit to relatives who live in a neighboring town, or 
to see a circus-parade at the county seat. The family vehicle is apt 




>. 



SUMMER. 



73 



to be the high, two-seated spring wagon. It is not particularly 
handsome to look at, but I fancy it holds more happiness than the 
gilded cars with their gaudy occupants that they see pass in the 
parade. 

The strawberries are the first heralds of a summer full of good 
things to eat. The boy begins sampling each in turn as soon as 
they show signs 
of ripening, and 
on farms where 
children are nu- 
merous and fruits 
are not, very few 
things ever get 
ripe. You would 
not think, to look 
at him, that a 
small boy could 
eat as much as he 
can. He will be 
chewing on some- 
thing all the morning, and have just as good an appetite for 
dinner as ever. In the afternoon he will eat seventeen green 
apples, and be on hand for supper as lively as a cricket. Still, 
there are times when he repents his eating indiscretion in sack- 
cloth and ashes. There is a point in the green-apple line beyond 
which even the small boy can not safely go. The twisting pains 
get hold of his stomach, and he has to go to his mother and 




lVadt')-s — fht'v 7iiet their " pants ^ 



74 THE FARMER'S BOY. 

get her to do somethin<T to keep him in the land of the living-. 
He repents of all his misdeeds while the pain is on him, just as he 
would in a thunderstorm in the night that waked and scared him ; 
and he says his prayers, and hopes, after all, if these are his last davs, 
he has not been so bad but that he will go to the good place. 
When he gets better, however, he forgets these vows and does 
some more things to repent of. But that is not peculiarly a boy- 
ish trait. Grown-up people do that. 



PART IV. 

AUTUMN. 

BY September you begin to find dashes of color amono; the 
upland trees. It is some weakling bush, perhaps, so 
poorly nourished, or by chance injured, that it must 
shorten its year and burn out thus early its meager foliage ; but as 
soon as you see these pale flames among the greens, you feel that 
the year has passed its prime. 

Grown people may experience a touch of melancholy with the 
approach of autumn. The years fly fast — another of those allotted 
them is almost gone ; the brightening foliage is a presage of bare 
twigs, of frost and frozen earth, and the gales and snows of winter. 
This is not the boy's view. He is not retrospective ; his interests 
are bound up in the present and the future. There is a good deal 
of unconscious wisdom in this mental attitude. He looks forward, 
whatever the time of year, with unflagging enthusiasm to the days 
approaching, and he rejoices in what he sees and experiences for 
what these things then are, and does not worry himself with 
allegories. 

The bright-leaved tree at the end of summer is a matter of 
interest both for its brightness and its unexpectedness. The boy 
will pick a branch and take it home to show his mother, and the 
next day he will carry it to school and give it to the teacher. He 

(75) 



76 



THE FARMERS BOY. 



would be glad to share all the good things of life that come to 
him with his teacher. Next to his mother, she is the best person 
he knows of He never finds anything in his wanderings about 
home or in the fields or woods that is curious or beautiful or good 
to eat but that the thought of the teacher flashes into his mind. 




A voyage on a log. 



His intentions are better than his ability to carry them out, for 
he often forgets himself, and eats all the berries he picked on the 
way home, or he gets tired and throws away the treasures he has 
gathered. But w^hat he does take to the teacher is sure of a wel- 
come and an interest that makes him happy, and more her faithful 
follower than ever. 



AUTUMN. 'J'J 

Summer merges so gently into autumn that it is hard to tell 
where to draw the line of separation. September, as a rule, is a 
month of mild days mingled with some that have all the heat of 
midsummer; but the nights are cooler, and the dew feels icy cold 
to the boy's bare feet at times on his morning trips to and from 
pasture. 

Yet, if you notice the fields closely, you will see that many 
changes are coming in to mark the season. The meadows are 
being clipped of their second crop of grass; the potato tops have 
withered and lost themselves in the motley masses of green weeds 
that continue to flourish after they have ripened ; the loaded apple 
trees droop their branches and sprinkle the earth with early fallen 
fruit ; the coarse grasses and woody creepers along the fences turn 
russet and crimson, and the garden becomes increasingly ragged 
and forlorn. 

The garden reached its fullness and began to go to pieces in 
July. First among its summer treasures came a green cucumber, 
then peas and sweet corn and string beans and early potatoes 
The boy had a great deal more to do with these things thai> he 
liked, for the gathering of them was among those small jobs 
it is so handy to call on the boy to do. However, he got 
not a little consolation out of it by eating of the things he 
gathered. Raw string beans were not at all bad, and a pod 
full of peas made a pleasant and juicy mouthful, w^hile a small 
ear of sweet corn or a stalk of rhubarb or an onion, and even 
a green cucumber, could be used to vary the bill of fare. Along 
one side of the garden was a row of currant bushes. He 



78 



THE FARMER'S BOY. 



was supposed to let those mostly alone, as his mother had 
warned him she wanted them for " jelly." But he did not 
interpret her warning so literally but that he allowed himself 
to rejoiee his palate with an occasional full cluster. It was 
when the tomatoes ripened that the garden reached the top 

notch in its of- 
fering of raw deli- 
cacies. Those red, 
full - skinned tro- 
phies fairly melt- 
ed in the boy's 
mouth. He liked 
them better than 
green apples. 

The potatoes 
were the hardest 
things to manage 
of all the garden 
vegetables he was 
sent out to gather 
for dinner. His folks had an idea that you could dig into 
tiie sides of the hills and pull out the big potatoes, and then 
cover up and let the rest keep on growing; but when the boy 
tried this and had done with a hill, he had to acknowledge 
that it didn't look as if it would ev^er amount to much after- 
ward. 

The sweet-corn stalks from which the ears were picked had to 




Potato-ln<":nnz. 



AUTUMN. 



79 



be cut from time to time and fed to the cows. It was this thin- 
nini^ out of the corn, as much as the withering of the pea and 
cucumber vines and irregular digging of the potatoes, that gave the 
garden its early forlorn ness. 

By August the pasture grass had been cropped short by the 
cows, and the drier slopes had withered into brown. Thenceforth 
it was deemed necessary to furnish the cows extra feed from 
other sources of supply. The farmer would mow with his scythe, 
on many evenings, in the nooks and corners about his build- 
ings or along the roadside and in the lanes, and the results of 
these small mowings were left for the boy to bring in on his 
wheelbarrow. 

Another source of fodder supply was the field of Indian corn. 
Around the bases of the hills there sprouted U[) many surplus 
shoots of a foot or two in length known as " suckers." These were 
of no earthly use where they were, and the boy on a small farm had 
often the privilege, of an afternoon, of cutting a load of these suckers 
for the cows. Among them he gathered a good many full-grown 
stalks that had no ears on them. Later there was a whole patch 
of fodder corn sown in furrows on some piece of late-plowed ground 
to gather from. He had to bring in as heavy a load as he could 
wheel every night, and on Saturday an extra one to last over 
Sunday. 

The cows had to have attention one way or another the year 
through. They w^ere most aggravating, perhaps, when in September 
the shortness of feed in the pasture made them covetous of the con- 
tents of the neicrhborino; fields. Sometimes the bov would sight them 



8o THE FARMER'S BOY. 

in the corn. His first great anxiety was not about the corn, hut as to 
whether they were his folks' cows or some of the neighbors'. He 
would much rather warn some one else than undertake the cow- 
chasing himself If his study of the color and spotting of the cows 
proved they were his, he went in and told his mother, then got his 
stick and took a bee-line across the fields. He was wrathfully in- 
clined when he started, and he became much more so when he found 
how much disposed the cows were to keep tearing around in the corn 
or to racing about the fields in as many different directions as there 
were animals. He and the rest of the school had lately become 
members of the Band of Mercy, and on ordinary occasions he had 
a kindly feeling for his cows ; but now he was ready to throw all 
sentiment overboard, and he would break his stick over the back of 
any one of these cows if she would give him the chance, which 
she very unkindly would not. He had lost his temper, and now he 
lost his breath, and he just dripped with perspiration. He dragged 
himself along at a panting walk, and he found, after all, that this 
did fully as well as all the racing and shouting he had been indulging 
in. Indeed, he was not sure but that the cows had got the notion 
that he had come out to have a little caper over the farm with 
them for his personal enjoyment. All things have an end, and in 
time the boy made the last cow leap the gap in the broken fence 
back into the pasture. They ev^ery one went to browsing as if 
nothing had happened, or looked at him mildly with an inquiring 
forward tilt of the ears, as if they wanted to know what all this 
row was about, anyway. The boy put back the knocked-down 
rails, staked things up as well as he knew how, picked some pep- 



AUTUMN. 



8i 



permint by the brook to munch on, and trudged off home. When 
he had drunk a quart or so of water and eaten three cookies, he 
began to feel himseU" again. 

Besides all the extra foddering mentioned, it is customary on 
the small farms to give the cows, late in the year, an hour or 




A cJiipmiink tip a tree. 

two's baiting each day. The cows are baited along the road- 
side at first, but after the rowen is cut they are allowed to roam 
about the grass fields. Of course, it is the boy who has to watch 
them. There are unfenccd crops and the apples that lie thick under 

the trees to be guarded, not to mention the turnips in the newly 
13 



82 



THE FARMERS BOY. 




seeded lot, and the cabbages on the hill that will spoil the milk if 
the cows get them. The boundary-line fences, too, are out of re- 
pair, and the cows seem to have a great anxiety to get over on 
the neighbors' premises, even if the feed is much scantier than 

in the field where 
they are feeding. 
The boy brings 
out a book, and 
he settles himself 
with his back 
against a fence- 
post and plans 
for an easy time. 
The cows seem 
to understand the 
situation, and they 
go exploring round, as the boy says, " in the most insensible 
fashion he ever saw — wouldn't keep nowhere, nor anywhere else." 
He tries to make them stay within bounds by yelling at them 
while sitting where he is, but they do not seem to care the least 
bit about his remarks unless he is right behind them with a stick 
in his hand. The cows do not allow the boy to suffer for lack of 
exercise, and the hero in the book he is reading has continually to 
be deserted in the most desperate situations while he runs off to 
give those cows a training. 

There is one of the cow's relations that the boy has a particular 
fondness for — I mean the calf. On small farms the lone summer 



-"..t- 



fiaitiw^ the co-us by the roadside. 



AUTUMN. 



83 



calf is tethered handily about the premises somewhere out-of-doors. 
Every day or two, when it has nibbled and trodden the circuit of 
grass in its tether pretty thoroughly, it is moved to a fresh spot. 
The boy does this, and he feeds the calf its milk each night and 
morning. If the calf is very young it does not know enough to 
drink, and the boy has to dip his lingers in the milk and let the 
calf suck them while he entices it, by gradually lowering his hand, 
to put its nose in the pail. When he gets his hand into the milk 
and the calf imagines it is getting lots of milk out of the boy's 
fingers, he will gently withdraw them. The calf is inclined to re- 
sent this by giving a vigorous buck with his head. Very likely 
the boy gets slopped, but he knows well enough what to expect, 
not to allow himself to be sent sprawling. He repeats the finger 
process until in time the calf will drink alone, but he never can get 
it to stop bucking. Indeed, he does not try very hard, except 
occasionally, for he finds this butting rather entertaining, and 
sometimes he does not object to butting his own head against the 
calf's. He and the calf cut many a caper together before the sum- 
mer is through. Things become most exciting when the calf gets 
loose. It will go galloping all about the premises. It has no regard 
for the garden or the flower plants, or the linen laid out on the grass 
to dry. It makes the chickens squawk and scamper, and the turkeys 
gobble and the geese gabble. Its heels go kicking through the 
air in all sorts of positions, its tail is elevated like a flag-pole, and 
there is a rattling chain hitched to its neck that is jerking along 
in its company. The calf is liable to step on this chain, and then 
it stands on its head with marvelous suddenness. The women 



84 



THE P^ARMER'S BOY. 



and tiirls all come out to save their linen and "shoo" the calf off 
when it approaches the flowers, but it is the boy that takes on 
himself the task of capturing the crazy animal. The women folks 
seem much distressed by the calf's performances, while the boy is 
so overcome with the funniness of his calf that he is only halfway 
effective in his chasing. At last the calf apparently sees some- 
thing it never noted before ; for it comes down on its four legs 
stock still and stretches its ears forward as if in great amazement. 
Now is the boy's chance. lie steals up and grabs the end of the 
chain ; but at that moment the calf concludes that it sees nothing 
worthy of astonishment, and starts off again full tilt, trailing a 
small boy behind, whose twinkling legs never went so fast before 
and it is a question if things are not in a more desperate state 
than they were previously. By this time the boy's father and a 
few of the neighbors' boys appear on the scene, and between them 
all the calf gets confused, and allows himself to be tethered once 
more in the most docile subjection. Vou would not think the 
gentle little creature, who is so mildly nibbling off the clover 
leaves, was capable of such wild doings. 

On farms where oxen are used the boy is allowed to bring up 
and train a pair of steers. While the training is going on you can 
hear the boy shouting out his threats and commands from one end 
of the town to the other. Even old Grandpa Smith, who has 
been deaf as a stone these ten years, asked what the noise was 
about when our boy began training steers. By dint of his shoutings 
and whackings it w\as no great time before the boy had the steers 
so that they were quite respectable. He got them so they would 



AUTUMN. 



85 



turn and twist according to his directions almost any way, and he 
could make them snake the clumsy old cart he hitched them into 
over any sort of country he pleased. He trained them so they 




"-•j-i^' 



The boys and their steei's. 

would trot quite well, too. Altogether, he was proud of them, 
and believed they would beat any steers in the county clean out of 
sight. He was going to take them to the cattle-show some time 
and see if they would not. 

Cattle-show comes in the autumn, usually about the time of 
the first frosts. There is some early rising among the farmers on 
the morning of the great day, for they must get their flocks under 
way promptly or they will be late. Every kind of farm creature 
has its place on the grounds ; and in the big hall are displayed 
quantities of fruits and vegetables that are the biggest and best 
ever seen, and samples of cooking and samples of sewing, and a 
bedquilt, that an old lady made after she was ninety years old, that 



35 THE P^ARMER'S BOY. 

has about a million pieces in it; and another one that Ann Maria 
Totkins made, who is only ten years old, that has about nine hun- 
dred thousand pieces in it ; and a picture in oils that this same 
Ann Maria Totkins painted; and some other paintings, and lots of 
fancy things, and all sorts of remarkable work that women and 
o-irls can do and a boy isn't good for anything at. However, the 
boy admires all this handiwork, and is astonished at the big squash 
that grew in one summer and weighs twice as much as he does, 
and surveys the fruits with watery mouth, and exclaims, when he 
gets to the potatoes, any one of which would almost fill a quart 
measure, "Jiminy! wouldn't those be the fellers to pick up, 
though } " 

" I don't think you use very nice language," says Eddie's older 
sister, who is nearly through the high school. 

" Well, you don't know much about picking up potatoes," is 
Eddie's retort. 

There are more chances to spend money than you can " shake 
a stick at " on the cattle-show grounds. All sorts of men are 
walking around through the crowd with popcorn and candies, 
and gay little balloons and whistles and such things to sell, and 
there are booths where you can see how much you can pound 
and how much you can lift and how straight you can throw an 
eorpT at a " ni^^eer's " head stuck through a canvas two rods away. 
There are shooting galleries, and there is a phonograph, where you 
tuck some little tubes into your ears and can hear the famous 
baritone, Augustus William de Monk, sing the latest songs, and it 
is so funny you can not help laughing. Of course, the boy can not 



AUTUMN. 



87 



invest in all the things he sees at the fair; he has to stop when 
his pocket money runs out. But there is lots of free fun, such as 
the chance to roam around and look on at everything, and he 
has quantities of handbills and brightly colored cards and pam- 
phlets thrust upon 
him, all of which 
he faithfully stows 
away in his gradu- 
ally bulging pockets 
and takes home to 
consider at leisure. 
For a number of 
days afterward he 
squeaks about on 

his journeyings with 
his whistles and 
Jew's - harps and 
other noise - makers 
purchased at the fair, 
with great persistency ; but these things soon get broken, and the 
pamphlets and circulars he gathered get scattered, and the occasion 
may be said to have been brought to an end by his finding, two 
Sundays later, a lone peanut in his jacket pocket. It was in church 
time, and he was at great pains to crack it quietly, so that he could 
eat it at once. He succeeded, though he had to assume great inno- 
cence and a remarkably steadfast interest in the preacher when his 
mother glanced his way suspiciously as she heard the shucks crush. 




Shootiirg -with a sliirg. 



S3 THE FARMER'S BOY. 

Autumn is a time of harvest. The potato field has first atten- 
tion. When the boy's father is otherwise busied, he has to go out 
alone and do digging and all, unless he can persuade his smaller 
brothers and sisters to bring along their little express wagon and 
assist. In such a case he spends about half his time showing them 
how, and offering inducements to keep them at work. Usually 
it is the men folks who dig, and the boy has to do most of the 
picking up. After he has handled about five bushels of the dirty 
things he has had enough of it ; but he can not desert. It is one 
of the great virtues of farm life that the boy must learn to do 
disagreeable tasks, and to stick to them to the finish however irk- 
some they are. It gives the right kind of boy a decided advan- 
taofe in the battles of life that come later, whatever his field of 
industry. He has courage to undertake and persistence to carry 
out plans that boys of milder experience will never dare to cope 
with. 

Potato fields that have been neglected in the drive of other 
work in their ripening weeks, flourish often at digging time with 
many weedy jungles. This makes digging slow, but the econom- 
ical small farmer sees some fyain in the fact, for he can feed the 
weeds to the pigs. After the midday digging, while his father is 
carrying the bags of potatoes down cellar, the boy gets in a few 
loads of the weeds. The pigs are very glad to come wallowing 
up from the barnyard mire to the bars where the boy throws the 
weeds over. They grunt and crunch with great satisfaction. When 
the boy brings in the last load he has a little conversation with 
the pigs, and he scratches the fattest one's back with a piece of 



AUTUiMN. 



89 



board, until it lies down on its side and curls up the corners of its 
mouth and jrrunts as if in the seventh heaven of bliss. 




.4 corner of tJtc sheep yard. 

A little later in the fall the onions have to be topped, the 
beets pulled, the carrots spaded out, and the corn cut. Work at 
the corn, in one shape or another, hangs on until snow flies. The 
men do most of the cutting and binding, though the boy often 
assists; but what he is sure to do is to drop the straw and to hand 
up the bundles when they are ready for stacking, and gather the 
scattered pumpkins and put them under the stacks to protect them 

from the frost. He likes to play that these stacks are Indian tents, 

14 



QO THE FARMER'S BOY. 

and he will crowd himself in among their slanting stalks till he is 
out of sight. He picks out one or two good-sized green pumpkins 
that night from among those they have brought home to feed to the 
cows, and hollows them out and cuts awful faces on them for jack- 
o'-lanterns. He fixes with considerable trouble a place in the 
bottom for a candle, and gets the younger children to come out 
on the steps while he lights up. They are filled with delight and 
fright by the ghostly heads with their strangely glowing features 
and their grinning, saw-toothed mouths. The boy goes sailing 
around the yard with them, and puts them on fence-posts and car- 
ries them up a ladder, and cuts up all sorts of antics with them. 
Finally, the younger children are called in, and the boy gets lone- 
some and blows out his candles, and puts the jack-o'-lanterns away 
for another occasion. 

On days following there is much corn -husking in the fields, 
which the boy assists at, though the breaking off of the tough cobs 
is often no easy matter, and it makes his wrists and fingers ache. 
Toward sundown the farmer frequently brings home a load to husk 
in the evening, or for the morrow's work should the day chance 
to be rainy. In the autumn it is quite common to do an hour or 
two's work in the barn of an evening, though the boy does not 
fancy the arrangement much, and begs off when he can think of 
a good excuse. 

In October the apples have to be picked. The pickers go to 
the orchard armed with baskets, ropes, and ladders, and the wagon 
brings out a load of barrels and scatters them about among the 
trees. It looks dangerous the way the boy will worm about 




•^ 



•5s 



AUTUMN. 



91 



among the branches and pursue the apples out to the tips of the 
smallest limbs. He never falls, though he many times comes near 
it. The way he hangs on seems to confirm the truth of the theory 
that he was descended from monkey ancestors. But the boy is on 




Out for a tramp. 

the ground much of the time, emptying the baskets the men let 
down into the barrels and picking up the best of the windfalls, and 
gathering the rest of the apples on the ground into heaps for 
cider. 

It is a treat to take the cider apples to mill. There is always 
something going on there — always other teams and other boys, 
and great bins of waiting apples and creaking machinery, and an 



92 



THE FARMER'S BOY. 



atmosphere full of cidery odors. The boy loses no time in hunting- 
up a good straw and finding a newly filled barrel with the bung 
out. He establishes prompt connections with the cider by means 

of the straw, and fills 
himself up with sweet- 
ness. When he has 
enough, and has wiped 
his mouth with his sleeve, 
he remarks that he 
guesses he has lowered 
that cider some. When 
they brought their own 
cider home and propped 
up the barrels in the yard 
next the shop, the boy 
kept a bunch of straws 
conveniently stored, and 
as long as he called 
the cider sweet he fre- 
quently drew on the 
barrels' contents. When 
the cider grew hard he 
took to visiting the apple bins 
more frequently, and, if you no- 
ticed him closely, you would almost always see that he had bunches 
in his pockets that showed that he was well provided with these 
food stores. 




^ dii)ik at the tuh in the hackvarj. 



AUTUMN. 



93 



The great day of the fall for the boy was that on which he 
and a lot of the other fellows went chesmutting. They had been 
planning it and talking it over for a week beforehand. The sun 
had not been long up when they started off across the frosty quiet 
of the pastures. Some had tin pails, some had bags, some had both. 
One boy had hopes so high that he carried three bags that would 
hold half a bushel each. Most of them had salt bags that would 
contain two or three quarts. Several carried clubs to knock off the 
chestnuts that still clung in the burs. They were all in eager chatter 
as they tramped and skipped and climbed the fences and rolled 
stones down the hillside and whirled their pails about their heads, 
and waited for the smallest boy, who was getting left behind, to 
catch up, and did all those other things that boys do when they are 
off that way. How they raced to be first when they nearcd the 
chestnut trees ! There was a scattering, and a shouting over finds, 
and a rustling among the fallen leaves. The nuts were not so 
numerous that it took them long to clear the ground. Then they 
threw their clubs, but the limbs were too high for their strength 
to be effective, and they soon gave up and went on to find more 
trees. The chestnuts rattled on the bottoms of their tin pails, and 
the boys with bags twisted them up and exhibited to each other 
the knob of nuts within. As the sun rose higher the grass be- 
came wet with melted frost, and the wind began to blow in dash- 
ing little breezes that kept increasing in force till the whole wood 
was set to singing and fluttering. The boys enjoyed the briskness 
of the gale, and agreed, besides, that it would bring down the 

chestnuts. They wandered on over knolls and through hollows, 
15 



g^ THE FARMERS BOY. 

sometimes in the brown pastures, sometimes in the ragged, autumn 
forest patches. They clubbed and climbed and picked, and bruised 
their shins, and got chestnut-bur prickles into their fingers, and 
they had some squabbles among themselves, and the smallest boy 
tumbled and got the nose-bleed and shed tears, and it took the 
whole company to comfort him. On the whole, though, they got 
on very well. At noon the biggest boy, who had a watch, told 
them it was twelve o'clock, and they stopped on the sunny side 
of a pine grove, where there was a brook that slipped down over 
some rocks near by, and ate their dinner. The wind was whistling 
and swaying high up among the pine-tops, and now and then a 
tiny whirlwind caught up the leaves beyond the brook and dashed 
them into a white-birch thicket. In the sheltered nook where the 
boys sat the wind barely touched them, and they ate, and drank 
from the brook, and lounged about afterward in great comfort. 
They followed the little stream down a rough ravine, when they 
again started and went through the same experiences as those of 
the morning. They saw two gray squirrels, they heard a hound 
baying on the mountain, and there was a gun fired ofT some- 
where in the woods. They found a crow's nest, only it was so 
high in a tree that they could not get it. and they picked up many 
pretty stones by the side of the brook that they put in with their 
chestnuts. They got under one tree that was in sight of an orchard 
where a man was picking apples. The man hallooed to them to 
"get out of there!" and after a little hesitation — for the spot was 
a promising one — they straggled off into the woods again. While 
they traveled they did a good deal of odd eating. They made 



AUTUMN. 



95 




J mud turtle. 

way with an occasional chestnut, and they found birch and moun- 
tain mint, and dug some sassafras root, which they ate after getting 
most of the dirt off. The biggest boy's name was Tom Cook, 
and he would eat almost anything. He would eat acorns, which 
the rest found too bitter, and he would chew pine and hemlock 
needles and sweet-fern leaves, and all such things. He got out 
his knife while they were crossing a pasture and cut out a plug 
of bark from a pine tree and scraped out the pitch and juice next 
the wood, and said it w^as sweet. The others tried it, and it was 
sweet, though they did not care much for it. 

In the late afternoon the squad of boys came out on a preci- 
pice of rocks that overhung a pond. The wind had gone down 



g5 THE FARMER'S BOY. 

and the sun was getting low, and it seemed best that they should 
start homeward. They were back among the scattered houses of 
the village just as the evening had begun to get dusky and frosty. 
The smallest boy had more than a pint of chestnuts, and the big- 
gest boy had as many as three quarts, not counting stones and 
other rubbish. The day had been a great success, but they felt 
as if they had trudged a thousand miles, and were almost too tired 
to eat supper. However, when the boy began to tell his adven- 
tures, and set forth in glowing terms his triumphs and trials, and 
listed the wonderful things he had seen, his spirits revived, and in 
the evening he was able to superintend the boiling of a cup of the 
chestnuts he had gathered, and to do his share of the eating. 

When the chestnut burs opened, autumn was at its height. 
Now it began to decline. Every breeze set loose relays of the 
gaudy leaves and sent them fluttering to the earth in a many- 
tinted shower, and the bare twigs and the increasing sharpness 
of the morning frosts warned the farm dwellers that winter was 
fast approaching. 



PART V. 

COUNTRY CHILDREN IN GENERAL. 

IN this final chapter I propose to gather up some of the loose 
threads of my narrative that for one reason or another 
missed attention in the earlier chapters, and to study the 
effect on his character of the life the farmer's boy leads. Besides, I 
wish to tell something of the former's girls. They are an impor- 
tant part of the family life which this book attempts to portray, and 
I have given them too scant attention. They are not so important 
as the boys, to be sure, if we accept the latter's opinion, though 
you might think, after he gets to be sixteen or seventeen, he 
thought them more so, from the amount of attention he gives them. 
The small girl's likes and dislikes, her enthusiasms and pleas- 
ures, are to a large degree identical with the boy's. She will beat 
him half the time in the races that they run. If she has rubber 
boots, she is just as good a wader. She can play ball, climb fences, 
slide down hill, skate — indeed, do almost anything the boy can, 
with just the same interest and enjoyment. The girl is often a 
leader in roaming and adventure, and some girls make excellent 
outdoor workers too. A lively and capable girl often wishes, I 
fancy, that she was a boy, and might have the boy's outdoor free- 
dom ; and sometimes, too, she envies his opportunity to cope with 
vigorous work and win a name and place in the world. At any 

(97) 



98 



THE FARMER'S BOY. 



rate, she wishes she could sHp away from the confininjr house- 
work and more sober demeanor which she is expected to have. 

On farms where boys are lacking, the girls sometimes, of neces- 
sity, do the boy's work. They drive the cows to pasture, help in 
hoeing and weeding, load the hay, and pick up potatoes. But 




IVeeditig the posy bed. 

usually they only hover around the edges of the outdoor work. 
They take care of a corner in the garden and a strip of flower-bed, 
feed the chickens, run on errands, and help pick apples. The 
smallest girls, unless their folks are uncommonly particular, run 
around about as they please, and dip into as many different 
kinds of work as they choose, and they get just as smutty and 
dirty as any of the boys. When the girls get into long dresses 



COUNTRY CHILDREN IN GENERAL. go 

they become moie and more particular as to what they are seen 
doing about the fields, and they avoid anything- but the lightest 
muscular exertion, and not all of them even dare to make a spec- 
tacle of themselves by riding around on the horse-rake and tedder. 

The girl is early taught to wash and wipe the dishes, to sweep, 
to mend rents and sew on buttons. The boy has to acknowledge 
that in these things his sister beats him. She can do every one 
quicker and better than he can, though he claims that the buttons 
she sews on w^ill come off, and that, give him time enough, he can 
sew a button on so that he can depend on that button's staying 
where it was put to his last days. It is certain, too, that the girl 
is apt to be quicker with her mind than the boy. She has her 
lessons better in school, and she is more docile in her behavior. 
Often she is the boy's helper and adviser in all sorts of difficulties 
and troubles, and is a companion who is safer and better for him 
in almost every way than any of his mates. We all crave a sym- 
pathetic understanding and interest in our doings. It is the mothers 
and sisters who are most apt to have these qualities, and it is to 
them that the boys go most freely with their w^oes and pleas- 
ures. They are far safer confidants than the rest of the world, and 
the bov is likely to have reason for sorrow in later life because he 
did not follow their wishes and advice more closely. 

All kinds of boys are to be found on our New England farms — 
good and bad, handsome and homely, bright and dull, strong and 
weak, courageous and timid, generous and mean. I think the better 
qualities predominate. The typical boy is a sturdy, wholesome- 
looking little fellow, with chubby cheeks that are well tanned and 



lOO 



THE FARMER'S BOY. 



freckled in summer, and that in the winter take a rosy glow from 
the keenness of the air. The same is more mildlv true of the 




Graiii/pa husks sweet corn for dinner, and tells a story at the same time. 

appearance of the little girls, and with some advantages in their 
favor. You take a group of country girls some June morning, on 
their way to school, with their fresh faces and clean, starched aprons 
— they look, as Artemus Ward says, " nice enough to eat without 
sass or seasonin'." 

As the children grow up they are apt to lose much of their 
simplicity and attraction. They become self-conscious and in many 
ways artificial, particularly in their manner and in their pleasures. 
This is not especially apparent in their work, and there are those 



COUNTRY CHILDREN IN GENERAL. lOi 

who continue to a large degree refreshingly earnest and natural in 
whatever they do ; and country life all through, with its general 
habits of labor and economy and its comparative seclusion, is less 
artificial than that of the cities. Vet there are the same tendencies 
in both places. The girl becomes increasingly anxious about the 
mode of her dress — she wants to have all the latest puckers of the 
world of fashion. She twists and cuts off and curls and frizzes her 
hair, and she braids it and rolls it and makes it stand on end in 
her effort to find the adjustment most becoming to her stvle of 
beauty. The result sometimes is that she has the appearance of 
having gone crazy. She wears toothpick-toed, high-heeled shoes, 
and declares publicly that they couldn't be more comfortable, while 
privately she complains of corns. For society use she cultivates a 
cultured tone of voice and some tosses of the head, rolling up of 
the eyeballs, shrugging of the shoulders, etc., calculated to be " kill- 
ing." She has an idea that it is becoming in her to appear to 
take fright easily, and she screeches at sudden noises, and is in a 
panic at the appearance of the most scared and tiny of mice. 

A good deal of this is done for its effect on the boys. It 
seems to interest and entertain them, and keep them hanging 
around. The girls sentimentalize a good deal about the boys when 
they get into their teens. They keep track of who is going with 
who, and pick his looks and characteristics, in their shallow way, 
all to ravelings. What a fellow says, how he curls his mustache, 
how he parts his hair, how horridly or how well he dances, how 
late it was when he got home from the last party, etc., are dis- 
cussed at all kinds of times and places. Two girls who have come 

I6 



I02 



THE FARMER'S BOY. 



home from meeting together some eold autumn night will loiter 
and freeze to death at the gate where they are to part, talking for 
an hour or more over the " fellows " after this manner. The result 
is tiiat their minds come into a state where subjects without a 
gossipy or sentimental turn have no interest. 

As a rule, the boys fall into the girls' ways, and, noting how the 
current runs, encourage them. There is among the young people 




A game of croquet. 

a good deal of flirtation, which I take to be a kind of aimless play 
both of talk and manner that hangs around the borders of the sen- 
timental, and often gets a good way beyond it. The boy who 
avoids this sort of thing is said to be bashful ; he is afraid of the 



COUNTRY CHILDREN IN GENERAL. IO3 

i^irls, has no sentiment, and all that. This may be a sufficient ex- 
planation in some cases, but in others the trouble is not in the 
girls, but in this kind of girls. It may be because the boy has 
more sentiment than the average that this sort of society is dis- 
tasteful to him. 

Most boys are not as sentimental as are most girls. They are 
more workaday and practical. Their life, in the matter of getting a 
living, has more responsibility than the girls'. At the same time, 
the boy gains a coarseness of thought and feeling often in his 
companionship with the men and boys he is thrown in with that 
the girl is almost altogether free from. 

It is a curious idea of manliness a boy sometimes has. He 
tries to express a grown - up competence to take care of himself 
by a rough manner and rude speech, and ability to enter into 
the spirit of the worst kind of conversation and stories not 
only without a blush but with sympathetic guffaws of laughter. 
He resents his parents' authority ; he likes to r.esort to the loafing 
places when he has leisure. He aspires to smoke and chew and 
spit, like the rest of the loafers there. This may be an extreme 
picture, but there are a vast number of boys it will fit to a degree. 
Most country boys admire the gentility of smoking, and will be 
at great pains to acquire the habit after they get to be fifteen or 
sixteen years old. Perhaps the average boy never becomes a fre- 
quent smoker, but he likes the pleasurable feeling of independence 
it gives him, when he starts oflf for a ride, to have a cigar tilted 
neatly upward from the corner of his mouth. It stamps him a 
gentleman to all beholders, and the lookers - on know from his 



I04 



THE FARMER'S BOY. 



manner and cio;ar that he is a person of vigorous and stoutly held 
opinions that it would be best not to attempt any fooling with. 

When you see a young man gayly riding by, sitting up very 
straight, with his best clothes on and his five-cent cigar scenting 

the air with its gentle 
aroma, you may know 
he is going to take his 
girl to ride. If he can 
by any manner of means 
find the money at this 
time of his career, the 
young man buys a fast 
horse and a shiny 
buggy carriage. He 
fairly dazzles your eyes 
as he fiits swiftly past. 
Sometimes it takes 
more than one horse 
to finish his courting, 
for the first one may 
die of old age before he gets through. But whatever disappoint- 
ment the young man suffers in his love affairs, and however his 
fancy or what not makes him change one girl for another, you can 
not see, when he starts on his journeys, that he has ever lost 
aught of that first freshness of demeanor that characterized him, 
and the perfume of his cigar has the same old five-cent fragrance. 
After all, these young fellows who go skirmishing around in this 




Afternoon on the front porch. 



COUNTRY CHILDREN IN GENERAL. 



105 



fashion are mostly hearty and good-natured. When such a one 
marries, his horse goes slower, the polish wears off from his 
carriage, he neglects his cigar, and the two settle down, as a rule, 
into a very staid and comfortable sort of folks. Thev micrht have 
been wiser, they might have got more from life ; so could we all 
of us. 

Shakespere said that " all the world loves a lover," and people 
are fond of repeating this saying ; but that was three hundred years 
ago. I don't know how it was then, nor how it is in other parts 
of the world now. I am very sure, however, that New England 
people do not love a lover. He is a butt for more poor jokes 
than any other character. We think he is ridiculous. We call him 
off and set him on, and scare him and encourage him. We at 
least make that other saying come true, that "faint heart ne'er 
won fair lady." As for the girl, I imagine that among her friends 
she gets a gentler and more coddling treatment. 

Even the smallest children in some families have to endure a 
lot of talk from their elders about their "girls" and " fellows " that 
is the most sickly sort of sentimentality. If let alone, the children's 
minds do not run much on these lines, though they occasionally, 
in their innocent way, build some very pretty castles in the air, that 
soon melt away harmlessly into nothing in the warmth of their 
other interests. 

Boys, when they begin to go to the larger schools of a town, 
are apt to learn a variety of rough tricks, exclamations, and slang 
that shock the folks at home when the boys get to showing off 
within their sight and hearing. With the best of them the largest 



jo6 THE FARMER'S BOY. 

part of this presently wears off. Others cultivate their accomplish- 
ments, and even make their conversation emphatic with certain 
of the swear words. Such boys the righteous of the community 
condemn as altogether bad, though it sometimes happens that even 
they have redeeming traits. I do not think that lying is a com- 
mon fault of country boys, though most of them find themselves 
at times in circumstances that make it difficult to abstain from 
giving the truth a pretty severe straining; -and perhaps most have 
two or three lies on their consciences that are undoubtedly black. 
But the boy has probably repented these in shame and sorrow, 
and hopes he never will be tempted again to tell one of the un- 
truths he so despises. Really bad and unblushing lying a boy is 
apt to learn, if ever, after he gets among the older and rougher 
boys who hang around the post offices every evening at mail-time, 
or who attend the center schools of the town. 

The farm, more than most places, tends to give children habits 
of thrift and singleness of purpose in the pursuit of education. 
There is seclusion enough on the majority of farms, so that the 
children are not confused by a multiplicity of amusements and too 
much going on. This seclusion may make some dull, but to others 
it gives a concentrated energy that makes them all through life 
untirinor workers and stout thinkers. Often from such a start thev 
become the woild's leaders in many widely scattered fields of use- 
fulness. Because you are a farm-boy, it is not, however, certain 
that you have only to seek the city to win fame and fortune. 
The city is already crowded with workers and with ability. It is 
a lonely, homesick place, and many years must pass before a per- 



COUNTRY CHILDREN IN GENERAL. 



107 



son can win even a position of safety and comfort. The boys with 
good habits and health and a strong will have the best chance. The 
boy with loose habits and lack of energy will find more temjota- 
tions to a weak and purposeless career than in the country. Some 




A sa'iOiniU. 



boys and girls can live lives of wider usefulness in the large towns 
than in the country, and it is best for them to go there ; but it 
is a serious question for most whether they will gain anything by 
the change. 

It was my plan, in this book, to take the farmer's bov straight 
through the year. There still remains a final month that has not 
been treated. With Thanksgiving, autumn ends and winter begins. 
The trees have been bare for some time, the grasses withered 
brown, and the landscape white with frost everv morning. There 



io8 



THE FARMER'S BOY. 



have been high winds whistHng about the farm buildings and 
scurrying through the leaf litter of the fields. Snow squalls have 
whitened the air, and the roadway pools have frequently been glazed 
with ice. But the solid freezing and snows of winter are not looked 
for until after Thanksgiving. The boy gets out his old mittens, and 
his cloth cap that he can pull down over his ears, and he keeps 
his coat collar turned up, and hugs himself and draws himself into 
a narrower compass as he does his outdoor work. On some cold 
morning he gets out his sled, and if he finds a bank steep enough 
he slides down on the frost very well. He tries such ice as comes 
in his way, and of course breaks through and gets 
his feet muddy. 

Then real winter comes, 
and the world is all white, 
and sleighbells jingle 
along the road, and 
the ponds and riv- 
ers are bridged with 
solid ice. The boy, 
with some other 
boys, and perhaps 
some of the girls, 
too, is often out 
with his sled. They 
do a good deal of sliding down the steepest kind of hills — indeed, 
that is the sort they search out ; and if it has a few lively humps 
in it, so much the better. Thev dash down the decline in the most 



■% 




Going up for a slide. 



COUNTRY CHILDREN IN GENERAL. 109 

reckless fashion, and then keep going up a little higher to make the 
descent still faster and more exciting. One little fellow, who lies flat 
on his sled and steers with his toes, gets slewed out of the track and 
goes rolling over and over with his sled in a cloud of flying snow. 
Vou would think it would be the end of him ; but he gets up 
dazed, and powdered white from head to foot, and his lip quivers, 
and some tears trickle from his eyes. He says in his shaky voice 
that he is going home. The other boys gather round and brush 
him off, and Willie Hooper lends him his handkerchief, when the 
boy can't find his own ; and they tell him how he looked going 
over and over, and what he ought to have done ; and that he is 
all right, and to "come on, now; there ain't no use of goin' in 
just for that ; we'll have a lot of fun yet." The boy finds him- 
self comforted, and in a few minutes he is as lively, careering down 
the hill with the others, as ever. 

By the time a boy gets to be six or seven years old he expects 
to find a pair of skates in his Christmas stocking. For some time 
after that his head accumulates bumps of a kind that would be apt 
to puzzle a phrenologist. It is astonishing in what a sudden and 
unexpected manner the skates will slip from under you! There's not 
even a chance to throw out your hands to save yourself You are 
in luck if vou can manage to sit down instead of going full-length. 
Your ankles wobble unaccountably, and the moment you leave off 
mincing along in a sort of awkward, short-stepped walk and try 
to strike out, down you go on your head. Then your skate-straps 
are always loosening, or getting under your skates and tripping 
you up, and your feet become cold and your mittens get wet. 

17 



jjQ THE FARMER'S BOY. 

But the bo\^ keeps at it with a perseverance under difficulty and 
disaster that would accomplish wonders if applied to work. In 
time he can skim around with any of them, and play shinny and 
skate backward and in a circle, and cut a figure 8 in the ice, and 
almost do a number of other remarkable things. 

The boy who skates much has to experience a few break- 
infjs through the ice. On the little ponds and near the shore this 
is often fun, and the boy who dares go nearest to the weak places 
and slides longest on a bender is a hero in his mates' estimation, 
and, I might add, in his own. When he does break in he very 
likely only gets his feet wet, and he does not mind that very much; 
but when he breaks through in some deep place, and does not grip 
the ice until he is in up to his arms, it is no smiling matter. He 
usually scambles out quickly enough, but the worst of it comes in 
getting home in his freezing clothing, that conducts the chill of the 
frosty air clear to his bones. Yet it rarely happens that anything 
serious comes of these accidents. 

The year goes out with Christmas, the holiday that perhaps 
shines brightest of all the list in the boy's mind. A few days be- 
fore its advent he and his folks visit the town, where all the stores 
are, to make the necessary purchases. They do much mysterious 
advising together, but never as a family group ; there always is at 
least one shut out. It takes a great deal of consideration and 
calculation to make forty-nine cents go around among all your 
friends. But the members of the family are usually considerate, 
and when the boy fishes for hints of their likes, they make it clear, 
in suggesting the thing they most want, that he will not have to 



COUNTRY CHILDREN IN GENERAL. 



1 1 1 



spend such a great deal. Then, while he is buying in the store, the 
others that happen to be with him are always good enough to stand 
by the door and look the other way, so that, of course, when they 
get their presents they are a great surprise to them. 




A winter ride. 

Each of the children brings home various little packages, which 
they are at great pains to hide away from the others, though they 
can not forbear to talk about them darkly, and make the others 
guess, until they are almost telling themselves. Some of them, par- 
ticularly the girls, are apt to be "making things" about this time, 
and you have to be careful how you notice what is left lying around, 
or you discover secrets, and there is likely to be a sudden hustling 



112 THE FARMER'S BOY. 

of things out of sight when you come into the room, and looks 
of such exaggerated innocence that you know something is going 
on. If you show an inclination to stop, your sister says, " Come, 
now. Tommy, do go along ! " 

" What for ? " says Tommy. 

"Oh, you've been in the house long enough!" is the reply. 

" Well, I guess I want to get warm," Tommy continues. " It's 
pretty cold outdoors. Say, what is it you're sitting on, Nell, any- 
way ? 

" I didn't say I was sitting on anything," says Nellie. " Vou 
just go along out, or you sha'n't have it." 

Tommy blows his nose and laughs, and pulls on his mittens 
and shuffles off. 

On Christmas eve the children hang up their stockings back 
of the stove, and are hopeful of presents, in spite of the disbelief 
they express in the possibility of Santa Claus coming down the 
stovepipe. Sure enough, in the morning the stockings are all 
bunchy with the things in them, and the children have a great 
celebration pulling them out and getting the wraps off the pack- 
ages. They do all this without stopping to get more than half 
dressed, and breakfast has to wait for them. They are in no haste, 
for they have popcorn and candy to munch on that they found 
in their stockings, and every one has to show all his things to 
each of the rest, and see all the others have, and spring the baby's 
jack-in-the-box about half a dozen times till they get used to the 
fright of it. 

They have better things to eat that day than usual, and more 



COUNTRY CHILDREN IN GENERAL. 113 

of them, and with that and the sweetmeats and extras some of 
the children are Hkely to get sick and quarrelsome before the da)' 
is out. 

In the evening there is, perhaps, a Christmas tree at the school- 
house. There has been a turmoil of preparation in the neis^hbor- 
hood for several days previous; for the children have to be set 
learning pieces, and practising, and fixing up costumes, and cake 
and cookies and all the good things to eat have to be made 
ready, and some one has to collect the dimes and nickels and 
quarters to get candy and oranges and Christmas-tree trimmings 
with. Then some two or three have to make a journey to the 
woods and chop a good branchy hemlock or spruce of the right 
size and get it set up in the corner of the schoolhouse. Finally, 
the green curtains have to be hung that will separate the audience 
from the stage, where the small people do their acting and speak 
their pieces. 

The whole village turned out in the evening. They came on 
foot and they came in teams. Usually each group carried a lantern 
to light its way, and these were set in the entry when their bearers 
went in. The schoolhouse windows were aglow with light, and 
within things fairly glittered to the children's eyes. There were 
six lamps along the walls, besides those back of the curtains, and 
every one was lighted and turned up almost to the smoking point. 
Everybody was there, besides four boys from the next village, who 
sat on a front seat, and James Peterson's dog. Some of the big 
people got into some of the small seats, and certain of the neigh- 
bors who didn't get along very well with certain others had to man- 



114 



THE FARMER'S BOY. 



age carefully not to run across each other's courses. The air was 
full of the hum of talk, and the young people were runnmg all 
about the open space and in and out the door, and there were 
consultations and gigglings and flurries over things forgotten or 
lost or something else, without number. The curtain was drawn, 




r.-- 




Sliding on the frost. 



but you could see the top of the gayly loaded tree over it, and 
the movement of feet under it, and you could see queer shadows 
of figures within, doing mysterious things on it. Sometimes a 
figure brushed against the curtain, and it came bulging way out 
into the room, and the four boys from the next town had the 
greatest work to keep from exploding over the funniness of this ; 



COUNTRY CHILDREN IN GENERAL. 115 

and, as it was, one of them tumbled off from the narrow seat he 
occupied. 

By-and-by there was a quieting in the flurry up in front, and 
some one stood before the curtain with a paper in his hand and 
announced that the first exercise of the evening would be so-and-so. 
There was no astonishing genius shown in what followed, but a 
person would have to be very dyspeptic not to enjoy the simplicity 
and earnestness of it all. Each child had his or her individual way, 
and some were so small they could only pipe and lisp the words, 
and you didn't know what they said ; but when they made their 
little bows and hurried off to find their mothers, you and the rest 
of the audience were delighted, and applauded just the same. There 
was a melodeon at one side of the room, and the school sang some 
songs, and one ot the young ladies sang a solo all alone, and 
they had a dialogue with Santa Claus in it, who was so dressed up 
in a long beard and a fur coat and a deep voice that you wouldn't 
have any idea it was only Hiram Taylor! 

At length came the Christmas tree. How handsome it looked, 
with all the packages and bright things hung among its green 
twigs, and the strings of popcorn looped all about, and the oranges 
and candy bags dangling everywhere ! Three or four of the young 
people took off the presents and called out names, and kept every- 
body growing happier and happier. When the tree was bare, and 
even the popcorn and candy bags and oranges had been distributed, 
some of the women folks got lively in a corner where there was a 
table piled all over with baskets and boxes. Then plates began to 
circulate around, and it was found that there was a pot boiling on 



ii6 



THE FARMER'S BOY. 



the Stove and a smell of coffee and chocolate in the air. About nine- 
teen different kinds of cake started on their wanderings, and there 
were biscuit and something to drink, and nuts that were partly 
walnuts and partly store nuts ; and you had a chance to talk with 
everybody and show your presents, and altogether had so good a 
time that you felt as if it would last the whole year through. 

It would take many books to tell all there is to tell about the 
farmer's boy ; and what better place is there to leave him than this 
Christmas night, with the rest of the family, snugged up among 
the robes of the sleigh, on the way home } The lantern on the 
dashboard flashes its light along the road ahead, the horses' hoofs 
strike crisply on the frozen snow, the bells jingle, and the sky over- 
head glitters full of radiant stars. In the gliding sleigh are the 
children, holding their precious presents in their laps, and, still in 
animated conversation, they review the events of the evening. The 
sleigh moves on, they are lost to sight — the book is ended. 




*%' .«^, 



